Flames
by disco biscuit
Summary: Bellatrix and Voldemort: the story of their relationship. Shagging, violence, love (ish), whole bag o' Fraught Emotion. All that jazz. COMPLETE!
1. by the fire

****

Your life will be transformed with power

By living truly in my name

-_Hymn, Gerard Markland _

__

*

It's like falling. Steadily watching the surface speed closer, noticing the intricacies of bright stones that will shatter your bones and imbed in your skin. Knowing you're going to break, but feeling that euphoric rush of cold air streaming through tangled black hair and billowing your skirts and not caring. I'll be laughing all the way down. 

Her hands do not match my own. Her hands are light, with cracked red skin, blistered where she held them to the fire. She likes pain. She considers it beautiful. She says to me, The longer I spent in Azkaban, the more beautiful I became. I look at her face and do not try to understand, only see my own reflection in her eyes. I smile at myself. 

We are at home, by her favourite fireplace. The room rings with silence, smells of dried blood and musty skin. She has not bathed for months and exudes a tropical fever with every movement. The dark folds of her dress are encrusted, her hair hangs in limp rags. Her eyelids droop dark and heavy, as if punched by a meaty fist. I watch her shuffle closer to the flames. As always, she is on the floor while I reside in my chair. It is comfortable to slip back into old habits.

Bella, I say.

-What is it, Lord?

Her voice is humbled, though still tinged with scorn, the aftermath of the bad taste of good wizards. She is coursing with fresh hate, the encounter at the Ministry has only made her more loyal. I search within myself, and find this to be the only relief to a growing tide of fury. 

-You will burn.

-I know, my lord. I want to burn. 

Time passes. The skin on her arms reddens and shines like blood poured into milk. She twitches, a smile playing about those ripened lips, swollen from where the metal of the statue that bruised them.

-Come away, my faithful child. Enough. 

She obeys, and shuffles across the dark polished floor to my feet. Brazenly, she lays the scalded arm over my knees. It feels like soft dough balanced across the thin bars of a grille. Beauty is not pain, but power, I think, as I bend my head and run my tongue over the flaming flesh.

__

Red is my signature. Death Eaters are required to wear hooded black, but I'm always in the same colour underneath: crimson for torture, rose for plotting, scarlet for killing. I was wearing the female Longbottom's ruby wedding ring when she gargled her last sane word. I think the stolen sparkle on my finger was the catalyst to what pushed her over the edge. A shame really, the fun had only just begun. I wanted Crouch to at least see a little red of his own: Crucio can only do so much on the inside before it starts to break the skin. A truly crucioed victim will be eventually found inside out.

I feel a certain affinity with the night. This room, with it's lacquered floor, resembles licked liquorice in the firelight. Liquorice. I havn't thought of it for years…a distant dream from when I was Tom, when I bought penny sweets from the newsagent on Vauxhall Road. Strange, that I am thinking of petty past events, when I should be dwelling on my future, raging round the room, wringing necks for the disaster of last night's events. Perhaps it is the way Dumbledore addressed me - Tom. I shape the word with my mouth, as if fitting it over the neck of a bottle marked 'poison'. 

I can still taste her. Hot, raw skin. The stench of sweat and dirt and blood. She was the only one who never winced at the burn of the Mark on her arm. When she Apparated, she was smiling.

When I met him, I was carrying a trail of nightshades and about to become a Lestrange. The wedding was held in the garden of Grimmauld Place, I was in the kitchen and waiting for the music to start. Guests stood outside, their shoes sinking into the mud, hands clasped together in anticipation. I thought I was alone. 

A noise in the corner made me start. The man before me was a deal younger than the Dark Lord is serve today, his transformation not yet complete but coming along nicely. The first I noticed was the red of his eyes, like blood exploded in globes of glass. I knew it was the man my fiancé followed, knew it was the man my family spoke so highly of. The eyes told me everything.

Nervous? he inquired. The voice was a surprise: high and chilled, like the icy whistle of the wind around a mountain top.

No, I replied, holding my head up handsomely to meet his eyes.

-Interesting. Normally brides are wretched wrecks. Not you. I know when somebody lies.

He moved swiftly towards me across the flagstones, bars of low evening light creeping across his face, creating dark hollows and waxy highlights. The only consistency was the steady neon shiver of his eyes, flames refusing to die.


	2. crucio

****

Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man:

Preserve me from the violent man

__

-psalm 140

-_Crucio_

The dull beat of her fists on the blackened boards, juddering the reflected firelight. Hoarse screams splitting an open, wet hole. Power is beauty.

A break. Her heaving figure, face down, nails leaving deep gouges as they scrape down the floor.

-Look at me.

Her face turns towards mine, a luminous moon with craters for eyes. I see the polished lacquer of the floorboards have been fogged with a circle of rasping breath. 

-You let the prophesy be destroyed. You let your fellow Death Eaters be caught and returned to Azkaban. You knew I would do this. Lord Voldemort does not forgive. Not until he is paid back what he is owed. 

The mouth opens, tries to catch words from the air, like she's trying to pick apples from a tree with her hands tied behind her back.

-_Crucio_

A howl sings through the room. The fire in the grate flickers and roars, like a prisoner ripping out of his shackles. Something is happening. The fire gradually sinks to ashes, the life inexplicably drained, as if the prisoner has been suddenly hit with a killing curse. The only light in the room seems to be Bellatrix herself, the flashes of flailing skin glowing brighter and brighter. Unicorn flesh. My wand hand quivers. Something inside of me breaks loose and rattles against my chest. I do not know what is happening but I do not wish to stop. Fear is overridden with a fresh pleasure in finding a new form of pain. I watch as the skin bubbles white hot and webs over as channels of fire, flames which feed from the body as it arcs and screeches and sends black ash scattering across the floor. 

__

His fingers were pale, like fallen twigs from a silver birch. They touched the sleeve of my dress, appearing suddenly unclean against the stiff bright fabric, and I felt a great desire to grab his hand and hold it to my chest forever, branded by a dirty print that would grip around my heart.

Somewhere outside the dream, the wedding march began to play. His fingers fell limply to his side and he looked into my upturned face, lips stretching into a grimace of a smile. 

You know what you're marrying into, he said. 

I told him yes, I knew, and I wanted it. I wanted to follow him too, be part of what Rodolphus was part of.

-We've never had a woman. Perhaps…perhaps you'll be the end of all that. Do you swear to follow me, do you swear to kill and torture for my benefit and only mine? I ask you as if you are making a choice, but we both know you are not. If you lie to me in your reply, if you say you are ready when you aren't, then you will not be leaving this kitchen alive. Similarly, if you turn away from my offer, it will be the last you ever turn from. So I ask you this: Do you swear to follow, honour and obey me, in freedom and in jail, through capture and torture, until death parts us?

-I do.

The music outside faltered, wrong footed by my absence. Insistently, it started again, from the beginning. I ignored it.

-Meet me in yours and Rodolphus's bedroom at midnight tonight. Bring Rodolphus. We will perform the ceremony there.

He left, leaving me cold against the wall, mind racing with excitement and quite forgetting the waiting families outside. 

I lower my wand and watch as the fire sinks back into her skin, as if doused in water. Her body smokes in a crackling heap, she coughs and flecks of brittle black charcoal spray out in front of her.

Slowly, carefully, she straightens out, flexing arms and legs, arching her bank, wincing as boiling skin stretches across her skeleton like an ill fitting robe. Her own robe has been reduced to cinders and she lies in the suddenly dark room naked, though all I can see is a faintly pale white outline and the glitter of angry eyes.

-An interesting reaction, Bella. Strange that, although you are obviously in agony, there is not a burn that marks your body.

-Yes, master.

Her voice; rasping, dry, destroyed.

-You may go. We will discuss this in the morning.

-Yes, master.

She gets to her feet and crosses the room, walking as if on hot coals. The next day, when it is light, I will notice a path of footprint shaped burns and bubbled varnish that no magic can repair.

__

There is no colour in Azkaban. The walls are rough and grey and solid, but they are not what holds us. We hang suspended in thick liquid air, trying to break out of invisible chains, but eventually falling backwards further into ourselves, drowning in memories. If ever I find myself near the sea, I will think of the cold water surrounding my prison and my nostrils will contact at the damp salty smell and imagine it is tinged with unclean bodies and foul, rotted breath, and I will begin to scream.

I brood in my chair for the remainder of the night. I rarely sleep, or even rest. Constantly, my mind is working, shifting like sands in an endless desert. Whichever way I regard the problem, the landscape never seems to change. Prophesy gone, Potter escaped, death eaters behind bars. I should be formulating a plot, on my feet, torturing new ministry workers for information. And yet I am inanimate in my chair, the outline of Bella's body walking through the darkness in my mind. 

Rodolphus and I, we do not love. We seek power. We seek power in each other, we follow power in the Dark Lord. Power can be found in every living object, it is just a question of your ability to unlock it. There is no such thing as a 'good' wizard wielding power. It cannot be controlled, it cannot be siphoned or packaged with a nice neat label. Power is handled so much better, put to so much more just use, if it is used by those who truly understand it, do not try to tame it. Who am I to question that? I am who I am who I am. These words he told me, these words I cherish, like I cherish all that is his. He is_ all that is. _


	3. a new beginning

****

Look out on a summer's day,  
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.  
**_Don McClean -Starry, Starry Night_**

*

The traditional marital bed of the House of Black creaked as I sat upon the edge, like the sighs of so many past lovers. A plaque above the headboard informed me, in flashing silver letters, that the bed had been in use to newlyweds since 1486. Underneath, the words _Amour Pur _stood watch with a cold, fixed smile. On the opposite wall, a tapestry of all the couples who had spent their first night beneath the guarding silver letters. The latest addition was Lucius and Narcissa, weaved in white. I nodded, approving. Lucius needed an heir.

The room seemed to contain a reverent hush, as if it waited holding it's breath for every new couple. The throb of music and laughter downstairs heightened the explosive atmosphere, silent alarm bells shattered the air like fine frosted glass in an earthquake. The clock struck midnight. It was time.

_I havn't seen water in so long. I don't mean the salt encrusted violence of the sea, nor the brown dribble served at mealtimes in Azkaban. I mean pure, clean, real water you can drink without choking, wash in without drowning, throw yourself into without scraping scratches from the grainy friction. So when I catch sight of a room marked 'private', and find it to be a huge cathedral of a bathroom, I know exactly what I'm going to do. One darting glance down the empty corridor confirms he will find me, just following the trail of smoking footsteps. I place my hand squarely in the centre of the door and push, feeling ancient wood crackle and melt beneath my fingers like Rodolphus on that first night. With a twitching smirk, I slide the hand away, leaving a long, indented wipe mark, as if I died and slippered downwards in choking, futile submission. _

I travel through and am immediately sealed inside. The candles flicker to life in harsh, illuminating white. I wince. I am too used to dark crevices and crouching shackled to endure this interrogation.

Red, I mutter. 

That's better. A soft, pre-mass glow fills the church, bloodying the gold of the taps and flushing the skin of each darkly carved surface. I pick my way across the chilled flagstones, feel their cold slumber creep up through my body, hear the gentle hiss of my heated flesh slowly cool and pucker pallid blue. What used to be full, ripe, magnificent has shrunken and shrivelled pitifully. 

Once I told him Pain is Beauty. And it is. All too late, I realise the absence of pain may equal the absence of all it brings. Purple jointed, translucent and drooping, I descend the marble stairs into the empty bath, hoping for rejuvenation.

Possession. Power. Soon, I will possess all. Soon, I will control where the wind blows, I will call the moths from their chrysalises, I will tell the fire how high to burn. I have been delayed for too long. My fury has been allowed to mount to innumerable levels. My fury has possessed my self. I am a moulded cacophony of anger and hate and _power_. I should have risen to the ultimate height by now, for too long fools who have claimed to be my followers have ruined my plans. The Potter boy should be in his grave by now, but still he walks and still he interferes. No more. I will create the perfect possession. The only possession that will be truly faithful, the only possession whose loyalty could never waver, or dedication tire. A possession working not in greed of greater power, but under the manipulation of unflinching love for his father. My son. My heir. And the one who owes me the most will be the one who will give him to me. Bellatrix.

__

I remembered as the clock struck midnight, as I was lifting the last slice of wedding cake to my lips and feeling it softly squidge between my fingers. What had been a twitching, golden egg in the back of my mind suddenly cracked and burst forth a pair of insistent wings and an urgent call. Time to go to the real ceremony. 

Taking Rodolphus's small, bony hand, I made my way through the chattering guests and the colourful lights and the fountain of firewhiskey to the staircase. 

Where are we going? He whispered. My mother's over there, she wants to-

Upstairs, I said. The Dark Lord is waiting. I am to become a Death Eater.

He stopped, dead still. His eyes flashed brightly.

-Darling…that's amazing. He's performing the ceremony now? I had to go through all sorts of tests before he thought me worthy. He must have a very strong feeling about you…

His voice was tinged green and in the eerie candlelight of the staircase his face seemed to have twisted in distaste. I tugged insistently on his hand, feeling the limp, jelly-rind skin beneath my touch fold loosely.

-He said to meet in our bedroom at midnight. Quickly, let's go. I don't wish to displeasure him so soon.

A wave of fear flitted across Rodolphus's weakened face.

-Come on then. 

He was sitting on the bed when we entered, a large raven balanced on the finest white silk. Though the room had been in darkness before, the mute flick of his wand sent low, blue flames to the surrounding candles, lighting the room to reveal heavy dark furniture and an arrangement of heart-shaped crystal bottles balanced upon the bedside table, each containing a different coloured liquid. I suspected they were to act as some kind of aid to the future events of the evening, placed there by doting mothers who did not want any kind of hitch in proceedings. Sure enough, at closer inspection, they boasted labels such as 'confidence', 'fertility' and 'stamina'. I felt it would be unwise to laugh.

The Dark Lord stood. 

-Bellatrix Ursula Lestrange, you know why you have come to me tonight. You chose wisely to accept the power of Lord Voldemort, for only he can ensure your survival…as long as you ensure his. A Death Eater will be asked to perform many duties that will not be seen as lawful in the eyes of Ministry and common wizards, but will be essential to the rise of your master. You will be faithful to my command, or face torture and painful death. Do you understand?

Yes master, I said, my head high, staring into his eyes.

He paused, holding my gaze. 

-From now on, Bellatrix, you will wear my chosen colour for you.

In two steps he was in front of me with his hands on my chest, over my heart as I had so wanted back in the kitchen. Slowly, like blood from a wound, the deepest red soaked from where he touched, spreading over the pale material until it was drenched. His hands slid from my heart to my left forearm, and closed over the skin like a clamp on packed snow.

I assure you, this will hurt, he sneered.

I assure you, I will like it, I replied.

Follow the path. Follow the footprints to your future possession, follow the new road to your untapped power. Fools who love are my greatest weapon. Those who love see the object of their affection as the sun, and like a rooted, crushable flower, follow that sun. Without it, they cannot survive. If the sun moved further away, the flower would only crane higher, not caring it was making itself a target, blind to anything but its life-giver's light. 

In the past, this reason is exactly why I have prohibited my followers from loving. Intercourse is allowed solely for the purpose of reproduction, the creation of new followers. My son will be the greatest follower of all. His love for me will be so fierce, so blinkered and pathetic, nothing could stop him from doing my bidding. When I tell him to kill Potter, he will kill him. When I tell him to tear apart the Ministry, he will do it. His belief in his love for me will be such protection that his only destruction could be at my hands, when I have no use for him any more and I reveal to him the lie his life has been. 

__


	4. the follower

****

Save me, O God; for the waters are come unto my soul.

I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing:

I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.

I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried.

Mine eyes fail while I wait for my God

-_psalm 69: 1-3_

*

__

We stood in a confused darkness after he had left, tension ringing through the room like the deranged tingling of a sick-bed bell. My newly branded arm felt heavy and sore, I could sense the shape of the Mark patterning my skin like sunlight through poison ivy. The only illumination in the room was the proudly glowing silver Amour Pur_. Rodolphus twitched. I could imagine his beady eyes darting ferverently for an escape route. With a sigh, I sat on the bed. Let's get this over with._

Like all wealthy, pure blood families, the Blacks owned a crumbling country retreat to spend the summer months lazing in. The manor was situated half a mile from Little Hangleton, my father's hometown, and was in close proximity to my own country retreat, the dilapidated Riddle House. I liked the dark, winding corridors of my father's home, liked the smell of rot and canned fear, liked the echo of my fathers screams as I advanced upon him, wand ready. Sometimes I would stand in the centre of the room where my father and grandparents were murdered and allow a slow, watermelon smile to split my face in half. Other times I just laughed for hours on end.

I spent summers alone, only making contact via owl. For once, I felt it important to rest and plan in peace, allow my mind long, languid hours to meander like a lazy snake in thick grasses. Only occasionally, when I bored of setting fire to local stone-throwing vandals, would I leave my happy labyrinth and walk, blinking, through sunlit meadows and wooded glades, looking for something new to maim. Often I would pass the Black's abode and wonder what it would have been like to grow up in perfect, pure blooded peace instead of the grimy hole of the orphanage. I would watch the children fly broomsticks over manicured lawns while the adults sipped expensive blackberry cocktails from silver goblets, imagining myself fitting right in, with my dark hair and pale skin. They probably wouldn't even notice the new addition.

It was on one of these hot, stifling days many summers ago, before the war and before my appearance had altered, that I noticed a pair of Black children break from the rabble and cut across the fields towards Hangleton Forest. They made an exceptionally pretty pair, with their sweet monotone colouring and their unmarred youthful features. They couldn't have been more than fourteen. One, a boy whom I had only seen once before and knew to be named Sirius, seemed to half lag behind, half trot to keep up with the other, as if he dearly wanted to follow her though not in the direction she was leading him. The girl I was certain I had never seen before, feeling sure that if I had, I would remember it. Her jet black hair wreathed a luminous, heart shaped face set with heavy lidded eyes, shining like jagged, unpolished diamonds. 

I set off in pursuit, my fingers curving around my wand.

__

Sirius and I, we were closer than he would ever have let on. I look back on those summers at the country manner with what may be called happiness by a simpler mind. To me, happiness can never be the unadulterated feeling of self worth that others feel, my happiness will always be linked with dominance and control over another. To be happy, I will have to have orchestrated events to my disposal. And that's what I did. 

Sirius grew to hate me long before I killed him. In those carefree, androgynous days before adolescence, we were the greatest companions, sleeping in the same bed and waking long before everyone else to roam the empty, dew-soaked grounds. We played endless, secret games away from my sisters and their dolls houses, and for that short time I allowed him to be equal. But we grew, and I began to soak in the meaning of being pure blooded, while Sirius stayed steadfastly ignorant. I had already started my search for a greater power and was shrewd enough to notice Sirius's continuing isolation from the Black's ideals. I now used the time we spent together to assert my new dominance, to harp at him about our blood and how he was going to disgrace our name if he carried on the way he was going. Although he argued back, telling me how cold I'd become and how I disgusted him, something in his eyes suggested to me that although he disliked me, he still wanted to look_ at me. At first, I was confused. His words did not faze me, I already knew that he was going to reach miserable end on the path he was travelling and nothing I could say in reply would turn him back. What fazed me was the way he would stare when he thought I wasn't looking, a new hate and hunger grappling for space in his eyes like a duel of wills. Then I realised. He fancied me. And the more I watched his handsome face watching me, the more I wanted him too._

Voldemort is right. Power is a beautiful thing.

I follow the cooling footprints, fitting my own feet into their moulds and noticing they are only a little smaller than my own. I reach the handprint on the bathroom door and pause to hear the hollow splashing and rumble of running taps within. Her scent has seeped from under the door, a musty, unclean, burnt aroma, mixed with the perfume of the bubbles and bathing potions. She's washing Azkaban, and Rodolphus, away. With the curl of one thin, colourless lip, I push on the door and enter.

Her gasp echoes from the vaulted, scalloped ceiling like that of an actress who has been through her lines too many times. She knew I'd come, she just doesn't know why. Well. I'm here to do, not to explain. 

The room resounds as I stride purposely across the flagstones to the sunken stone tub. Shivering candles throw fearful, blood sprayed shadows across the spinning walls, metal pours into the perfumed air. Her face, fresh, luminous, fourteen years old again. Long dark tendrils of hair fan across the choppy, foaming surface of the bathwater like dead seaweed. The rest of her body is submerged under a foot of cloudy bubbles, again I am plagued by a distorted, shining outline. 

-Come on, my dear. Just pretend you're in a stream again.

I leave no time for her to scream as I plunge into the water, robes black and billowing, pulling her slippery, struggling form to my chest and not letting go. 

__

Never? I asked.

Never, he replied. I shaped his thin, breathless form around the reedy voice emanating from the darkness beside me and found it hard to muster surprise.

You'll need this, then, I said, passing him the bottle marked 'confidence'. It sloshed and dribbled as he gabbled at its neck. I hoped he'd be a little more adept when his moment finally came.

-You…you have? Isn't it a Black tradition to not sleep with anyone from other pure blood families until you are married?

I smiled a dark, invisible smile. The rule never mentioned anything about members of the Black family, I thought. To Rodolphus, I simply replied that I might need a little of the 'confidence' myself.

He ignored my request and finished the bottle, letting it jangle to the floor, and groped his trembling hands around my waist, roughly tipping me backwards into a lying position. I closed off my mind, waiting for oblivion. 


	5. the red room

****

The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance.

__

Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange

***

The stream wound ahead like a thin silver ribbon, colours of the trees reflected on it's broken-glass surface, small coloured stones shining on it's bed like buried treasure. The leafy branches above stretched across to meet each other, creating a soft, whispering roof. Sunlight shone through chinks in the leaves, patterning our skin and throwing diamonds on the water. It felt like we'd found our own private kingdom.

We'd been walking for hours, walking with no direction though baking fields and cool green woods. He kept asking me what I was trying to find, and I kept replying I didn't know yet, but I knew it was there. I was lying. I knew that we would stop when we reached the stream running through Hangleton Forest. It was secret, private, hidden from the world. A place to leave inhibitions behind, become a raw, stripped-down version of yourself. When we got there, I feigned surprise at finding such a secluded spot.

We stood at the bank, watched the butterflies dance through bars of light, listened to the flutes of birdsong flowing from the trees. The air felt fresh and damp, like a cold shower on a boiling day. I was suddenly aware of my dress sticking uncomfortably and my feet slithering inside spongy trainers. I felt dirty and untidy, out of place in this magical world where everything was pure. I glanced over at Sirius, seeing the grimy streaks of sweat on his forehead and the damp patches where his T-shirt clung to his oily skin and knew he was thinking the same thing.

I turned to him, that daring look in my eyes that I knew always made him want to do back flips.

I will if you will, I said, nodding my head towards the water and grinning, small pink tongue pointed from between neat pearly teeth. All according to plan, my sweet.

Normally he would have given me a shove and called me crazy, we could get diseases doing something like that, but something about the bright lights and damp air and surrounding green wall of forest made us both feel cut off from the world. Something inside him seemed to have finally broken free, we could do anything we liked and it would stay here, a secret absorbed in the trees.

I could have done it when she was asleep. I could have crept silently through pools of morning light, paused for a moment at her bedside to marvel at the smooth white cheek pressed on hewn brown pillow. The slightest flick of the wand and a whispered _Imperio_, and she'd have been as resistant as a doll in my arms. 

But I didn't want to spare her any pain. I didn't want to cradle her limp and oblivious. I wanted to hear her scream, feel her thrash underneath me like a trapped, startled swan, ultimately make her realise she could do nothing but succumb if she wanted to be my 'most faithful Death Eater'. It amused me that I could turn something she held with such honour into something so fraught with violence, how I could make her choose between rape and falling from grace. Except, it wasn't a choice at all. I would have raped her anyway.

__

My body; flailing, kicking out at the marble sides of the tub, smashing frenzied arcs of water through the air. His mouth smiling against my skin, long, jointed fingers clawing at my waist, running deep scratches across my stomach. A murmur in my ear.

-Would you deny your Lord, your leader? This act is vital to my accent to power. Is that not what you want, my faithful servant? Do you wish to turn away from your Master? We both know what penalty that will bring.

*

In one fluid movement I was peeling off my dress, wriggling free of the damp cotton and throwing it defiantly into the wood, where it hooked onto a branch. He laughed and followed my lead, flinging his T-shirt after it. He pulled his shorts away, and we both kicked out of our sweating trainers. I curled my toes over the chilled, dark rocks, feeling the heat sizzle away like steam and a delicious relief spread all over my body.

We stood by the water, holding hands, him in blue boxers, me in a grubby white training bra and underpants. I felt a tingling sensation crackle through my veins, as if touching his hand plugged me into a muggle electricity socket. The moist, pale air bit our skin, prickled our pores. I looked at the shadows of the leaves above patterning his smooth tan chest and the damp curls of hair below his navel and wanted to kiss him badly. I'd never been this close to a boy before, close enough to almost taste, read his thoughts.

We'll go on three, I said quietly. He nodded. One…two…three

*

I twist away, cracking my elbow on the stone bed of the basin, sending a cloud of blood through the water. Unadulterated panic, clawing at the ledge of the bath, scrabbling like an upturned beetle. The room spins red and he plucks me away, hugs me to his soaking chest once again, strokes my ragged, dripping hair. My screams shatter on the stone ceiling, my fists drum his body fuelled by a hate I have never experienced before. He only laughs. Strong arms squash me down and I fold like wet paper. Trapped underwater, held drowning and screaming shoals of bubbles, beating against the stone and breaking the skin, bleeding. Only when I fall silent and my punches become feeble, kittenish, does he hoist me up like a loving father. 

*

We jumped, landing with a glorious splash that sent flocks of birds screeching from the trees and a ripple through the air. Cool, clear waves slithered over my body, his hands cupped my waist, his face reached towards mine and we were under the water, hair streaming and entwining, our lips touching for the first time, packed together like cherries on peaches.

It was a slow, long kiss. His tongue felt soft and expert in my mouth. I moved my hand and placed it on his cheek bone, feeling the flutter of his eyelashes on my fingers. We only stopped when we had to come up for air.

He was gasping a little when we reached the surface, and not just because he needed to breathe. I madly tried to remain composed, though I felt an odd stirring in the pit of my stomach and a flurry of exuberance in my head…this was better than I planned. Going further would be no problem.

Water streamed off our bodies and twinkled in the sunlight, our skins encrusted in crystal. I heard the trill of the birds and hum of the honeybees mingling with the slapping of the water on the rocks. I felt the squidge of soft mud between my toes and began to laugh. 

-You're a good kisser, he said, shock and delight and fear swirling in his eyes.

-So are you I replied, truthfully. It sounded so inadequate against what I'd just experienced, though I'd never let him know that.

He kissed me again, and, breaking through all blocks in his mind, slid his hand over my shoulder so the strap of my bra slipped down.

-You do realise that thing's gone totally transparent? he muttered sloppily, his lips against the corner of my mouth.

-And you're just playing the concerned gentleman by telling me? I asked, mock-seriously.

-Of course, he replied, and unhooked it with one deft flick of the fingers. I peeled the damp material from my breasts and threw it onto the rocks. After that there was a lot of splashing, and many more birds flew disturbed from their branches.

__

*

-Enough of this charade, faithful Bellatrix. I have taken a draft of fertility potion that ensures you will fall pregnant with my son. My son will be key to our victory in the second war. This is an honour for you, for your family. Rodolphus would be proud. 

Before I can splutter my reply, before I can unscrew my eyes from their stinging, waterlogged blindness, I feel him hitch up his drenched robe and thrust upon me in one burning, jerking wrench. I scream my final scream and collapse against him, exhausted, annihilated, surrendering. For the first time in many years, I can feel what others would call my heart begin to break.

*

The light changed as the sun sank. Low flares of red and orange cut through the branches and a breeze picked up that sent chill ripples through the water. Sirius and I lay naked and pure on the bank, our bodies shining. Damp feathers of hair stuck to my cheek and jewels clung to my eyelashes. His hand moved and closed over mine, oddly warm and ingrained with soft mud. I felt like part of the kingdom now, an extension of the rocks and water and swirling leaves.

Time to go. The family would be worrying. We stood and faced each other, like Adam and Eve forced to leave paradise. Put our clothes on slowly and painfully, as if donning protection suits for the outside world. On the way out, through the trees, I kept my eyes shut so I couldn't remember the way. I didn't want to come back and spoil the memory. I could preserve it forever, pick through the forest trail to where the bright lights shone and the leaves quivered, relive it in my mind.

I left the pool with squelching feet slapping like whip cracks on the chilled flagstones. My robe hung heavily and lashed against my legs, berating me. The candles, crimson flames low and stationary, created a dark, deep red glow around the central basin. 

I turned nonchalantly to regard my son's mother, floating inanimate in the scarlet water, black hair trailing around her like an exploded halo. Her eyes, always alive with deceit, had dimmed to an empty mist. Her mouth, so often curved in a snarl or wicked grin, lay slack as dead meat. I worried for my child. If Bella were to die, there would be no chance for any of us. 

Kneeling at the side of the bath, I leant and pulled the body to me by the crook of its elbow and lifted it clearly, water mixed with blood running from it and staining my robe.

She felt limp and rubbery, breath wheezing in disjointed gasps, a cradled, alien Bella. It occurred to me that I had never held a woman in my arms before. For a moment, I was lost in white wet limbs, flopping, broken, bleeding, beautiful. My doing. My power. Her pain.


	6. the statue

****

I have carved you on the palm of my hand

I will never forget you;

I will not leave you orphaned

I will never forget my own.

__

- Hymn, Carey Landry. Based on Isaiah.

*

After it was over, he turned to me in the darkness and I could feel his leer. He was drunk on me, drunk on my power, my beauty, my faith. He'd never felt fire burn so brightly through his body, the flesh wounds I inflicted with contaminated snakebites. He begged me to strike deeper. 

Our Marks had made the connection, locking our flesh as tightly as the teeth of a zip, grappling a balance between attraction and repulsion, a pair of violent dogs on heat. I could feel my skin contort, fit around his own Mark like a vicious mouth. I was a vampire. I drew his thoughts and feelings and all his memories like a tide of blood. I churned them inside and made them my own, I tore them apart and held them up in grotesque show, my eyes never wavering or leaving those of my Master as we regarded each other through the strips of flesh held aloft in my showman's hands. 

Rodolphus was a gatekeeper. He was the ignorant necessity in bringing the Dark Lord and I in true union, a petty, physical annoyance bumbling beneath me. My real partner was wound tight inside my body, a snake binding bones and organs, coiling around my brain with a delicious, fruity crush. I could feel everything immaterial to the lord's dark order wrung from my mind in a gush of poisoned juice. Left dry, the corpse of the truth was all that remained. From then on my only thoughts were directed to that. There was nothing else left to think about.

I watched them sleeping on the bank, long, white, shining bodies entwined, stray fallen leaves plastered to their skin like stars. I had put wand back in my pocket some time ago, let all ideas of malice meander instead of converge into action. The scene before my eyes was too curious to interrupt.

This girl, this dark haired, glitter eyed, scheming girl transfixed me. One so young with such calculated plans was a rare, impossible gift I could not let come to harm. For, though the boy was obviously ignorant to her intentions, I saw them clear as scent. I watched her trap him into thinking he had orchestrated the lovemaking, that it was a wild blessing they had stumbled upon a secluded Eden, that it was a coincidence that at the height of his attraction to her he would get the opportunity to act on it. Yes, I watched and I marvelled and I admired. When they fell asleep with their toes trailing the cold water and chinks of sunlight dappling their bodies, I considered snatching her away and bringing her up as my own. I would nourish her cunning, I would show her the depths of a Darkness she had only sat and watched her reflection ripple upon. But then, from the depths of the darkness in my own mind, a quote from a book taught (and left) in my childhood emerged.

__

Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

She would rebel. She was at a volatile, egotistical age. After a while she would reject my nurture, go in search of her own power. She would become a rival…she would become an _equal, _staying to learn my secrets then leaving to use them against me. I could not abide this. I would have to let her go and experience Life, let it grind her down and sap her strength until she felt she _needed _a Master. Being a Death Eater is not entirely about power and loyalty, it is also about feeling comfort, shielding yourself from the outside world by drowning in order and all that is seen to be sinful. What can hurt you if you have already done your worst? The weakest of characters will become followers. The strongest will become rivals. Bellatrix Black, unlike all other Death Eaters, was born a rival. And if she were ever to learn this, to tap back into her undaunted childhood power, I would have more to contend with than all the Dumbledores and Potters put together.

__

When I was 18, there was Narcissa. Sirius was a forgotten memory, dust swirling in an abandoned cellar, a part of my life left behind a door I had locked myself. And, as if stepping from the wings, the indifferent girl who had lived a room above and only regarded me to pass the salt became my Sister. 

We were the toast of London, parties only starting when we descended the stairs surrounded in sparkling clouds of anticipation and frenzied men. She, the cool, arrogant, cut-glass princess with I her wild and filthy partner; together we reeled them in, digested and discarded. It felt like living. 

__

This was a new kind of corruption, a new source of amusement and deception and wickedness. I did not want to become part of the kingdom anymore. I no longer felt clean and pure when standing in the sunlight, or when I walked upon the edge of a stream. Instead, I flourished under neon bulbs and acid coloured alcohol, I pockmarked candyapple dance floors with lethal heels, I danced to the sound of screams high from illegal spells. 

All with Narcissa, the link between us unbreakable. 

The Riddle House has never been a shelter for Healing. In all of its huge, sprawling rooms, its secret underground luxuries (the bathroom, among others), no emphasis or welcome has ever been given to the art of selfless Good. 

I am nauseated at the sight of Wormtail's podgy, blundering hand repairing my most beautiful of creations and filled with rage that I commanded him to do it. But it must be done, a battered mother is not a healthy vessel for the child. Not a child as vital as this. 

He leaves when he sees my figure paused at the doorframe, hurries past me, clumsy and sweating. I slam the door contemptuously so it catches him of the way out, listen to sobs he tries to muffle as he pelts far from my wrathful presence. It is saddening that the most incompetent of my followers is the only one who can Heal. 

There she lies. White petals of skin torn but repairing, swollen cherry lips caked with dried blood. Wormtail cannot control the cut in her lip, if he dabs at it the bleeding becomes more ferocious. He sais we can only wait. It will be weeks before she can speak, before she can bear to break the threads of stinging scab over her mouth. Wordlessly, I stand above her.

In the same way Legilimency allows one to delve into the minds of others, I also possess the power to read another's body. This skill lacks the complexities of mind reading, it is natural, simple, allowing me to know more about the condition followers and enemies alike than they do. I often find myself surrounded by disease, virus, abnormalities, magical infections, cancers. Nothing is pure, corruption reigns in all. A corruption of the highest reigns in Bella. I hardly need to scan my eyes over the body to know that indeed she bears a child. _Blessed is the fruit of thy womb_.

There is no need for me to stay, I know now what I came to find out. But there she lies, asleep and oblivious, no huge accusatory eyes to follow my footsteps like dead, rolling marbles. I stay frozen, imaging myself a statue and her the stoned body crumpled at my foot. My hand, dripping icicles, drops slowly to her cheek. So soft, so cold. Smashable as puddlewater. But I wish only to feel. 

Stone, metal…everything solid moves at a certain temperature. Moved by miracles. 

__

I was, as always, linked to Narcissa when it happened. The crooks of our arms fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, we walked through mingled drifts each others breath. 

It was a cold day in St. James's park . Snow lay thick on the ground like bright, ethereal icing and the dome of the sky was white and electric, as though sparks could be knocked from it. Amethyst clouds trailed low and sullenly like children sucking their thumbs, the air they floated upon thin and whistling. And in the midst of all this frozen time, two figures walked, shattering everything they passed through like sheet upon sheet of crystal. 

Narcissa was always taller and almost coltishly thin. She had long chopstick limbs and high, fragile cheekbones that flushed from pure white to stain glass apples in the cold . Her hair was beaded with droplets from the moist air, framing her luminescent face in pale, angelic waves. My own hair spilled down my back, glossy and oil-black and swimming with rainbows. When I turned my eyes to look into hers, I saw they'd been cut from a different sky. I was midnight, she was January noon; ice blue and bruised with grey. Her lips, raw and flaky from the cold, felt dry on mine but I didn't care. 

And that's how we stayed, an invisible layer of frost locking us in with the rest of the still, suspended world. Lucius and Rodolphus, those lovely young men chosen by our parents, were dim shadows in the back of our minds, as they always were when this happened. I didn't feel anything sexual for Narcissa. I, we, simply felt that kissing and touching were an extension of our affection. It was our bond, tugging us together. At these moments, when nothing else mattered, when I seemed to drift into the natural fabric of my surroundings, was when I came as close to remembering Sirius. 

I was grasping at him, almost there, tasting his lips, when something happened. It was like a jolt went through our own comfortable world, signalling the arrival of danger and unnaturalness. We sprang apart, still gripping each other, my fingers half way run through her hair. Nobody was around, but there was definitely a presence, like inhaling smoke from a far away bonfire. Narcissa drew closer to me, her eyes large and revolving. She was vain, she was arrogant and put up a strong façade, but there was always fear bubbling just under the surface, ready to burst through at the slightest of things. I didn't understand it. I had never been fearful. 

It appeared as a speck on the horizon, cutting low red flares across the snow like a rising sun. A cool, crisp wind carried its scent to our nostrils, the scent of charred skin and destruction. The speck approached us at an astonishing speed and soon enough we could see it in all its terrible magnificence. 

It was at least ten feet tall, a flaming, galloping column of fire, deep dark eyes like burning coals staring out unblinking and hateful. It cut a blackened, smoking path through the snow, which was melting not only in the choking heat but in pure fear. Narcissa, her scrawny hands desperately gripping my flesh, seemed to be doing much the same. 

I had only seen blurred photographs of these creatures before, only read snatches of babble from the cheap thin paper of The Quibbler_, never believing or caring. I cared now. This was a Heliopath, a spirit of fire, a mythical creature that felt no pain or anger or happiness. It only felt the desire to burn, to bring desolation and death to whatever crossed its path. Narcissa and I were next and there was nothing we could do to stop it, there was no time to uproot from the ground and run. I pressed my face to hers, feeling our bones fit together, our eyelashes butterflying against each others' skin. Whispering, urgent, our voices colliding and nonsensical but desperate to express final words of truth and love, we waited for the bonfire to begin. _

It never came. The Heliopath drew close enough to singe my hair and flick cinders on my robes, but swerved at the last minute. When I looked up, it had gone, leaving a ruined path of slush and a riot of relief and questions in my mind. 


	7. Love, and other forces

****

You used to captivate me

By your resonating light

But now I'm bound by the life you left behind

Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams

Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me.

__

-**My Immortal, Evanescence **

*

For a long time, a blank. And then it all shifts, as lives often do. The inside of my skull splits, fingers of light lewdly probing the vacuum, and I feel a palpable sort of panic spread through me. I am alive. I am conscious. I will have to open my eyes and look upon his face and worship him as before. 

Voices.

One a damp, stumbling, dripping tap, the other high and cold like the pluck of a thin, frosted wire. I build their owners around them with sickening familiarity and heave. My master and my husband, exchanging pleasantries as if I'm not even here. In fact, to them, I'm probably not. I must have been sedated for days, given the depth from which I have arisen. They do not know I'm awake. 

-…secure areas?

-Yes. We all escaped safely…I came here as quickly as I could, Lucius said you wanted to speak with me.

I sink under again, drowning and colourless. It is several minutes before I emerge, scraping the fuzz from my clarity with a determined, metallic screech.

-My Lord….it is a great honour that you chose my wife to bear the child…

-I did not do it for you, Rodolphus. Basking in her reflected glory is an act as weak and pitiless as I'd expect from a follower such as you. Do not protest that you searched for me when others did not, you were only chasing at the heels of Bellatrix and Crouch. Yet another attempt at stealing glory. 

I imagine his eyes, pools of arctic blood boring into Rodolphus in that way he has. Plunged back under, I see a montage of irises, baby blue, fracturing and bleeding red until all traces of human has been obliterated. I think of those eyes, punctured, melted, smashed like boiled eggs, and am brought sharply back to the surface.

-Lucius informs me that our raid on the ministry may not have been as fruitless as I feared. He says you have interesting information regarding the Prophesy.

-Yes, Master. I heard it. The Longbottom boy broke the Prophesy during our battle with the Aurors. I saw that nobody else had noticed, and I was duelling so I wasn't able to move closer. Instead I performed the Auralis charm, enabling me to hear what it said. 

-Yes? And what was that?

Even through the blur, I can hear his voice crack with excitement.

- the part of the Prophesy you had not heard goes as follows: and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…

__

A long pause. So long I almost drift away.

-I gave him life, so it is only I who must kill him. Very well. It was a mistake to have acted so hastily, all those years ago. Harry Potter will not escape from me again.

-Do you know what the power he possesses is? 

-A fool such as Dumbledore would call it love…but love will be no match for the force of my greatest possession that I will unleash upon him. Rodolphus, you know that love is a delusion. You know there is only power to be gained from other humans. 

-Yes, master. You have taught me wisely.

And I know they've glanced towards my broken form, though with different intents playing inside them.

Bellatrix never needed to be taught, my master says in a voice he seldom uses. With those words resting on me like small white birds, I slip away. 

I'm by an empty fireplace in an empty room, the ghost of Bella uneasy at my feet. A foreign book lies open on my lap, a muggle artefact that makes me feel demeaned to consult. Yet I cannot help that nagging tug from my childhood that draws me to it, that makes me feel as if some kind of truth is contained between its soiled pages. 

The book, naturally, is about power. A power that gripped the people, with those who worshipped saved and those that didn't condemned. But even the worshippers were flawed, and people lost faith in the Source. So, He sent them a son. And the son taught them all, and he died for them to ensure the rise of his father. To this day, the power remains, omnipresent, followed by countless minions. The father can only grow in strength. 

The book grows heavy in my hands, I let it slip to the floor. I can only hold an object that preaches love for so long. The message is spoiled by this incessant muggle braying of it. I regard the Potter boy, so full of this implausible spell that I could not possess him. The prophesy suggests love is a power in itself, not the weak confusion of a mind that wishes to hide form the stark truth of the world. I cannot accept this. If love were a power, I would possess it. 

__

With Rodolphus, it was about endurance. I used sex with him to connect with the Dark Lord, gritting my teeth and bearing his fumblings for something higher, tangibly electric in its intensity. I felt closer to Him than I could ever be physically, as if I was buried deep in his mind, intoxicated. Afterwards, I would lie in a stupor, filled with knowledge that would leave me as the heat wore off. The next session would be about regaining those precious few minutes, where the scope of a lifetime's worth of information would be filtered into my body like the easiest thing in the world. 

I would visit Sirius and the stream in my dreams, when Azkaban could be blotted with sleep for a few meaningless hours. Wandering through my childhood idylls of purity and freedom was a relieving diversion, though I attributed nothing more to it. I was not trying to recapture a lost past. There was scarce amusement or subterfuge to be found between those maddening walls, and any that came to me I would embrace and clutch at under the cover of sleep. 

But Voldemort did not did not allow me my fundamental freedom that one time. He did not let me into his mind. Instead, he got into mine and he stayed there, though not like before. He left me wracked with shame. If I were in Azkaban, this memory would be what haunted me. 

I watched her after that. I came to know her moods, her relationships, the scent of cold mornings and silver she left in her wake. I began to think of her as my little Dark pupil and marvelled at the fresh deceit and lust for power she displayed in everything she did. I plotted her future.

At my silent, black-gloved magician's hand she would experience all the corruption life had to offer, revel in it until she slowly over dosed and longed for stability, a control to her wickedness. On her wedding day (to the weak, respectable man I had impressed upon her parents to introduce her to) I would reveal myself, give her what she thought she wanted. I would have her in my power forever, as a rescuer as well as a master. 

Sometimes my hope wavered, like drafts sending a candle flame into its giddy dance. I gazed into her mind and saw what I wasn't looking for: love. A distorted, frugal love, but love nonetheless. I realised it was an emotion that even she did not realise she possessed. If, on the rare occasion she felt a flicker of that sweet, swooping sickness, she would shake it off in panicked disgust and forget the whole horrible experience. It was this reaction that kept my faith in her, that she could realise a false emotion when she felt it. Love may arrest her from time to time, but it would not hold her captive for long. Still, I was pleased to see that becoming a Death Eater killed any remainder of what might have been her downfall. She developed a taste for violence. She killed muggles in the street, whispered avada kedarvras escaping from her hood as she passed them by. Not many people know that the female Longbottom was pregnant when my faithful followers descended, and this gave Bellatrix an increased vigour in torturing her. I believe her words to Mrs. Longbottom when she felt the baby die were 'my dear, I wouldn't worry, children cost the earth nowadays'. 

I looked into her core and found it black and barren and full of me. What had once been Bellatrix was now an extension of Voldemort - power-hungry, loveless, only concerned in the rise of the Dark Order. Yet another crushed rival. I allowed myself to smile.

__

So here she lies, Sleeping Beauty, sent to slumber by a kiss from her prince. Only hate can wake her now. 

I drift without the will to open my eyes, face the glare of the world that is waiting to pounce into existence once again. They know this. They are careful what they say around me. Yet, they do not try to drag me back. I did not expect them to show compassion for my well-being, of course, but it is curious that I have been allowed to use my own free will, that I have not been Imperio-d into functioning normally. It seems they are content with letting me lie here, rotting in my own fear and shame, a shadow of myself too scared to open my eyes.

Once, I felt his hand on my cheek. I lay still, the motion of his dry, brittle fingers evoking a new stirring inside me. I hated him. He had achieved the ultimate power over me and broken the illusion he had so preciously created. Power, as he had always asserted, is not beauty. It is not the only force that exists. I can see that now, because power can be used for what they call good, or what they call evil. Those forces, they are not delusions that are used to blinker us by the foolish Ministry, as he always said. I know it because I have experienced unforgivable evil at his hands, something that, if it had happened to anyone else, I would have supported as it ensured the Dark Lord's ascent to power. But it happened to me, and I know the truth now. Not some garbled device he used to brainwash his followers into getting him what he wanted. My truth. 

I have followed him, followed his lies, for 16 years. I have spent half my life believing that all that mattered was chasing power, grabbing at glory for somebody else, never living a day for myself. Yes, It brought me pleasure. Yes, I liked to kill and torture and bring suffering, all at his control. I am not a saint, I will never be a good person. But the person I want to be is my own, and that does not involve letting my body, my soul, slip away to validate his unworthy scheme. 

I think all these things, crouched terrified and violated behind my eyelids. A savage sort of strength begins to grow inside, a knowledge that he has made a gross mistake in his quest for power. He went too far, too deep, and he unwittingly opened the eyes of his greatest follower. He set her free. And now, she's going to kill him. 


	8. to be a perfect follower

****

Mary immaculate, star of the morning,

Chosen before creation began

Chosen to bring, for thy bridal adorning,

Woe to the serpent and rescue to man

-_hymn, F. W. Weatherell_

*

She's curled up and frightened, barricading the world with a sliver of blue-webbed skin. I watch her, and, though I hide my disbelief behind an impassive mask, I feel a terrible surprise and anger at the behaviour of my closest follower. It wasn't meant to be like this, I realise. I automatically assumed things would remain the same between us, that Bella would accept my actions with the same tireless diligence to the Dark Order as ever. What could be more of an honour than to bear the child of your master, the child who would change the fortunes of all? Rodolphus feels more pride than she does. 

I don't understand this uncharacteristic fear, shame…this sense of betrayal that hangs around her room like a sobbing black cloud. I have punished her with crucios far more painful. I once removed her little toe for a mistake she'd made, yet still she looked up at me with faith in her eyes, my hand still wrapped around her heart. If I looked into her eyes now I'd see a blank. I'd see right through her. 

__

Heliopath. My footprints, melted into the floor. Freedom. These things, in the haze. 

I cannot find the connection yet, not quite. It's like a flicker at the corner of my eye, a bare bulb I can't quite look at. But I'll get there. I think of Voldemort (not the Dark Lord, not my Master. Voldemort.) and his pathetic Order and know what I'm doing is right. I'm piecing together my own power, finding it deep inside myself in a place I'd locked away. For the first time in an age, I'm thinking clearly, each thought a bright flash on the surface of a lagoon. He doesn't know. He believes I'm broken and lost, a thin shadow hiding beneath the sheets. He doesn't know what to do, all that power and he's still confused, he still doesn't realise what's really going on. 

All those years of fierce monogamy paid off. I watched him use Legimency on a daily basis. Without understanding, I learned to block it, to use my own unforced brand of Occlumency that allows me to pull a curtain of outdated feelings between us, work unwatched behind them. Work on a plot to kill him. 

The Prophesy states that only Harry Potter possesses the power to kill Voldemort and only Voldemort the power to kill Harry Potter. There is no mention of Bellatrix, how she is going to be the only one to be doing any killing around here. So I'll have to take destiny into my own hands, using a curious sort of loophole that would never have occurred if Voldemort had not chosen me to bear his child. I am going to murder Harry Potter. It is possible, while the essence, the genetic coding of Voldemort is inside me. After Potter's death, the Prophesy will be fulfilled, yet destiny will have twisted to accommodate the new, real threat. While the only known hope for Voldemort's demise will have perished, I will be reaching for the heights of my power, calculating exactly when to strike. The child will play a role. My pregnancy, so precious to Voldemort, will protect me from any counter attack he might produce. It amuses me to turn what he holds in the highest esteem against him. Kill me, kill his child; his last weapon. I am invincible. 

Four months. Wormtail holds up a picture of the child he took with his specialised camera. The heart beats as a black blot behind its filmy skin, the jelloid legs kick feebly. A strange thrill rises inside me, like the swell of an icy wave crashing against a rock. This is how I feel before I kill. 

Bellatrix stares on with the dull, Azkaban look that has filled her eyes since she finally opened them a week after the rape. Since then, she's sustained a level of blankness that I would admire if it did not frustrate me so much. I _know_ this is not Bella. Yet I look into her mind and strike against an emotionless void. I find it hard to admit she is now a shell, dead wood around a budding green shoot.

Wormtail, seeing he is not going to get a response from either of us, proceeds to explain how all the child's organs have now formed. How we can see the heartbeat and, though the baby has been moving since the first month, that only now Bella will be able to feel it kick. He asks her, stuttering, if she's experienced anything of the sort yet. She turns her corpse's eyes on him and mutters. Leaves the room. From the bathroom along the corridor, we hear her vomit hit the tiles. 

__

Now that I know what I'm going to do, I find it harder and harder to block him out. As I go stronger and my mind grows like a fat ripe grapefruit, all those bright, juicy sacks of new knowledge full to bursting, it becomes more of a struggle to keep my face blank and my body limp. Especially when my body is behaving so negligently, throwing up its food one minute and cramming in strange concoctions of the stuff the next. Raw pickles. Bananas dipped in peanut butter. I feel disgusted with myself. Since when have I ever behaved like all the rest? I feel like the caricature of a pregnant woman and hate every minute of it. Hate the spawn inside, hate the creature that put it there. This ability to hate of my own accord is the only thing that keeps up the act. If I can feel the extremity of hate, then I truly exist within myself. I can truly achieve what I'm setting out to do.

The journey starts tonight, I think, waking up from my evening nap. Over these months, suppressing myself, blocking him out, I've learnt I must never plan, only make impulsive decisions. If I think too far ahead, I'll forget myself and blast into colour. All my careful work will be ruined. He'll see immediately what's going on and imprison me with no hope of escape. I do not let myself imagine what would happen next, for different reasons.

Rodolphus makes his weekly visit. I always forget he exists until he enters the room, water grey November light scraping roughly against his pitted skin. His smile doesn't reach his eyes, which shine like tiny metal beads quivering on unstable ground. He always looks the same, except for the hands. Today they're powdered in dry blood. 

-Just got back from a mission, Bellatrix. Ten more Ministry officials killed! The world really is on its knees now…only a few months to go, before the little one is born. Then everything will really kick off. Did you hear what the Dark Lord plans to do? As soon as it is born, it goes in one of those time bell jars, like we saw in the department of mysteries. Except this one will make it grow up, not shrink back into nothing - isn't it amazing? A fully grown warrior, ready to do his father's bidding! Aren't you proud to be a the mother of such an important figure? 

A child without a childhood. Even I, who was never truly young, had a childhood. 

-Wormtail says the boy will be a fanatic supporter of the Dark Order, he will not retain a baby's brain in an adult body. Of course, the question arises; how will he learn about his father if he has to grow up so unnaturally? It was explained to me that as soon as he develops all organs and a heartbeat the foetus will be subjected to a programme of charms and spells. These will implant all he needs to know into his mind. As his body rapidly matures in the bell jar, the knowledge will be activated. Do you realise, Bellatrix, that you are doing more than giving our master a son? You are part of the creation of the first perfect follower!

I'm sure Rodolphus sorely curses not being able to bear the child himself, judging by the look of manic ecstasy that transforms his hollow face. I smile dully up at him, marvelling at his stupidity as he pats my head, the way he would stroke a dog if it brought him a newspaper. Does he really not suspect? Has he really forgotten who he's married to? Even Voldemort hopefully suspects. 

Conspiratually, like a husband, Rodolphus sits on the bed beside me, creaking the sheets that are heavy with my vomitty breath, the sour sweat of many hours of boredom. 

When we have gained the highest power, the Dark Lord plans for all pregnancies to be as yours, he says in an exited undertone. All opposition will be wiped out by a new generation of perfect followers. Children will kill dissenting parents. The world will be entirely in the control of our master, with no false love or hate or good or bad. All will be bound in his power.

With a soft kiss to my temple and a loving hand briefly rested on my swollen belly, he rises and leaves the room. I stare at the space of air he left for several minutes, horror holding me leaden in my bed. Ironic, I think as I twist off my wedding ring and prepare my escape, the safety of all lives rests in the hands of the closest Voldemort ever got to a perfect follower.

No!,I scream, really scream, from the blackness of my core. The scream of a victim.

I run, tripping over my robes, beating a path through the grass, stamping stars from the rock hard earth. Fumble for my wand, aim blindly and set fire to a tree. I am alone, wild and pathetic, rage and humiliation and sorrow tearing at me from three different angles; tearing me apart. 

She sweeps high above my head on my old Hogwarts Quiddich broom, filched from the hall. I watch her disappear above the night clouds. She must be able to see the stars. 

Wormtail and Rodolphus come puffing out, too late, useless. I Crucio them both before they can ask me what happened and stride back into the crumbling, hated house, leaving them to scream on the lawn. I cannot have them see me in this distress. 

She tricked me. She wanted me to know. Just as I had run out into the garden after seeing her, defiant and alive, on the front steps mounting a broom, she had turned to me as she flew upwards and it was as if a curtain had been swished aside. I could see with clarity the bright depth behind that carefully constructed void, see that she no longer believed in me. She believed in love, in hate, in a new brand of truth. She had found her power.

I collapse. The day I had never believed would come has, indeed, appeared. I have no idea where she has gone, or what she intends to do, but I know I must stop her before she begins her damage. I know this, but I cannot seem to function. After seventy years of decisive action, I have been disabled by a pregnant woman. But, of course, she is different from all other women, pregnant or not. She is Bellatrix. The only one who could deceive me, or rival me, or captivate me. The only person I ever specifically wanted power over, set apart from the nameless blur of other faces. Only she could disappoint me in her dull submission, or fill me with such a cocktail of rage and admiration that she was able to escape. Bellatrix; the only person I will ever be sorry to kill. 


	9. love and death

****

I had to find you  
Tell you I need you  
Tell you I set you apart

Nobody said it was easy  
It's such a shame for us to part  
Nobody said it was easy  
No one ever said it would be this hard

__

-Coldplay, The Scientist

*

__

Morning light. A different day, different snow behind the cold glass. 

We're a world apart, in here, removed from the swirling flurry and movement outside. Like insects from before time began trapped in hard amber prisons, that's my sister and I, that's this thick golden room. 

I break the spell, flutter my eyelashes against the soft pale skin at the nape of her neck. Even when lying so close our lines blend like white and black into grey, we are still inextricably different. We fit together as two halves to the same story, but we stay separate, perfect entities. 

She moves, rolls so her long slim back is replaced by that fragile, angular face with the eyes cut from the sky outside; white and grey and blue. I do not avert her gaze, we always look into each others eyes. 

-Lucius will be dressing now. I should have been ready an hour ago. I need to check the flowers have arrived at the church, that the bridesmaids have their gowns.

I look into her face, bright as the moon, rippled with anxiety. I look at the shapes of our bodies through the bedcover, Narcissa's fragmented like the bones of a skeleton laid out in a museum, mine as defined and curving as a blue line of frequency.

-None of that exists. Only me. Only you.

Never have I spoken so tenderly. I did not know I possessed such tenderness, such yielding submission. She's rubbed away my hard edges, exposed a honeyed interior that scares me. But, like a drug, I can't help but succumb.

They appear in a rapid succession of _phuts, _agony from the Mark's burn still fresh on their sallow faces. Shuffling into a tight circle around me, greed and hunger growling through each gut, my own face reflected in each clouded eye.

-You will have heard by now, Death Eaters, that the traitor Bellatrix has escaped me with intent to damage the rise of our Order. I had always known that she could not be trusted and expected my followers to realise this. But you did not. You did not recognize she was allowed to live to test your cunning and faith in me. Even her search for me after my fall was all part of the ploy. You were meant to discover her dissent. Have I not always taught you to question everything to sort the believers from the enemies? You are responsible for her escape and if you want to keep your lives, you will go beyond your powers to locate her. If I find that any Death Eater is harbouring her, or spying to give her information, I will torture him until he splits in two.

I have lied to them before, about certain members who turned away from me. They are of the belief that Severus Snape is a lunatic. 

Lucius asks what he is to do if he finds her. 

I want her alive and brought swiftly to me, I tell them. She will be kept under the imperious curse and be given the treatment of charms that will create my perfect follower. When the child is born, she will be tortured to her death in front of you all. By that time, the child will have been transformed into a grown man and will cheer as she dies. 

-A most excellent plan, Master, Lucius hisses from under his hood.

It is not a plan, I spit. It is a foretelling of events to come. Bellatrix will be found and she will be killed. Lord Voldemort is never wrong. Now go! Find her and bring her to me.

With a murmur of approval, their malleable minds already erasing any memories of a faithful Bellatrix, the Death Eaters disappear as quickly as they came. My lies have become truth. Bellatrix is a traitor, was always a traitor. They were fools to have ever believed otherwise. It is their fault that it has come to this. The truth will spread, convert the rotting mind of every Dementor, Vampire, Werewolf or other dark creature in my alliance. One way or another, she will be caught.

I leave the house and walk across the grass I ran through as she flew free, sensitive eyes weeping in the sharp winter sun.

__

This broom is so old it powders beneath my fingers. At every movement and shift of breeze I fear it will snap like a brittle bone in the gums of a puppy. My escape has got off to a rickety start. I hope this isn't a prefigure of things to come. 

But I'm a good killer. I am certain that Harry Potter's death will be the smoothest part of this operation. So smooth, in fact, that I don't even have to think it through, just see it as an imminent event sparkling in some bed at Hogwarts, only separated from me by a couple of miles and a layer of cloud.

I once said pain was beauty. And I was right, there is always a temporary perfection in the stripped agony of a tortured human face. People are always closest to perfection before they die, for perfection is a life that has been completed. But beauty that shifts and changes, yet is as eternal as the promise of death, can be found in the sky. I look upwards at the brilliant dome of stars and see my namesake winking back, a divine eye always there to guide me. When we were children, Sirius and I would sleep on the cool manor lawns, safe under our separate watchers. 

I saw no beauty in Sirius before he died. I saw a bitter shell who had already lived, had always known what was coming until it eventually came and swallowed him unawares. A curious thing, Sirius's mind. So wracked with frustration, yet so fulfilled with love for his godson. 

I think of love; of death. How the two can coexist in not just Sirius but in everyone, how the sweetest of actions are tainted with annihilation. All actions have consequences. I realised the existence of love after I came closest to death. Sirius's defence of Potter lead him to his murder at my hand. As I swoop downwards into the Hogwarts grounds, as I hover by the window of the Gryffindor boys' bedroom, as my spell removes the glass and I creep across the moonlit room, I wonder what I'm doing all this for. Love or Death?

Of course, she hides. And while she hides I work towards her ruin. The death of the Potter boy took my followers by surprise. I sat, the eye of the storm, the calm presence at the centre of a circle of confusion and chaos. 

But _why_? Lucius stuttered, the mathematic control of his voice disintegrating. Master, I do not understand - she heard the prophesy, she knows Potter is the only one who could oppose you. It is as if she is still working under your orders.

-She is under the illusion that she is more of a match to me than Potter. She believes that, in time, she could become more powerful than your master Lord Voldemort. Bellatrix carries my essence inside her while she is pregnant, and was able to kill the boy not to my advantage but to remove any opposition. The prophesy has been fulfilled in the most unlikely circumstances. I understand now…the real battle of power is to be fought between master and servant.

Lucius had squinted from beneath his hood. _Battle_? Master, surely it will not come to that? Surely we will wait for the child to be born, then simply kill her?

-I tell you, there is nobody who could ever defeat me. But Bellatrix will most certainly try and fight, I realise now she will not be held under Imperius for long. 

Lucius's voice switched from disapproving to stunned. But Master, _Potter _could fight Imperius. Are you saying she possesses his strength of mind?

I turned to Lucius, my voice so chilled it shattered the air. The ability to fight Imperious does not denote strength, fool. It is a fluke, the capability of a particularly devious core. 

-Of course, my Lord, of course. Forgive my stupidity.

So now, I wait, and lie of her strength, and say she can never defeat me. I pace the Riddle house, seizing every new piece of information that comes from every garbled follower's voice. I compile it inside my head, try to create a structure, a palace for execution of terrible beauty. But whatever way I try to fit these words I hear together, they fall apart into so many jagged black letters; useless and breaking under my tender bare soles. I try to console myself, if Avada Kedavra cannot kill me, then nothing _she _can find within herself can. I console, but only try to believe.

__

If I were the sentimental type, I would think of the joy Harry Potter would feel at finally being reunited with Sirius. I would have looked upon his peaceful white face against the pillow, the dent of my wand still imbedded in his soft cheek, and smiled that he was away from the pain of being without the one he loved, that he was finally returning to him. But I felt nothing for Harry Potter. I did not even pause to look at him as he sighed the familiar dying breath, was just satisfied he'd played his small but crucial role so successfully. As I flew away all I thought of was the house I was travelling to next, and the person who occupied it, and how she was the only one I could turn to now.

I arrive at the door of the manor just as the sun is rising. The grounds are bathed in low, slanting flares of violet light, each dew-crystalled blade of grass sparkling darkest amethyst. Naked trees cut through the crisp November air, their elongated shadows like silhouetted Halloween toys. I am exhausted, cold, my back aching and hateful swollen belly straining against my filthy robe, totally out of place against this gothic splendour. I watch my trembling fist bang the serpent's head door knocker, frenzied and desperate. If she turns me away, I will fail, they will catch me no matter how deeply I burrow. I need her to help me find my power, only her help I can trust.

I wait, my insides twisting like black snapping eels. So this is fear. 

The door opens. We both gasp.

She looks different. Even in surprise, her face is stiff and proud as if carved from diamond; impossibly hard and polished. The lips are thin and frosted pink, the nose a lethal blade, the hair set and ice blonde. I, for the first time in my life, was ready to walk forward and put my arms around her in pure jubilation, but now I hold back. It's not just her face that has changed. Something inside her has solidified. Just as I remember our relationship as clear as water, she has forgotten. 

What the hell are you doing here? she whispers, fury warping the diamond visage. 

-I need somewhere to stay. Look, I know you still follow him, but I thought…

You thought what? You thought being sisters would be more important to me? You ignorant bitch. Us followers, we don't believe in family. I've been instructed to bring you to him, and I'm going to do exactly that. You were foolish to come here, Bellatrix.

I gape at her. I cannot breathe or think, I can only show her why I came. Which is why I move forward and grab her and hold her to me like a marble pillar and kiss her so hard my lips grind against hers and I can feel the slippery shapes of her teeth through them. At first, she tries to scream and throw me off, but I hold with all my might and eventually she slackens in my arms, though makes no effort to kiss me back. Even though I feel like I'm moving my mouth over a mound of pebbles, I think the message has got through.

I see a flicker behind us, platinum hair, colourless eyes. A gasp.

I break away and shove her aside, grab my wand and screech Imperio_. Lucius falls to the floor in an ungraceful heap, a dreamy expression on his face._

Do not let Voldemort know I can be found, I instruct him.

Narcissa turns to me, blue flames burning holes in her eyes. She is trapped. She does not want me here, but she cannot turn me in. That kiss dragged up too much of the past, whatever she feels for me now is shackled by a distant memory, an unpleasant aftertaste that cannot be washed away. 

I look to her, look into her eyes as I always do. Can I stay? You know something. Something that can help me. That day with the Heliopath - there's more to it than I know, isn't there? There's a reason why it swerved away from us.

She hangs her head, nodding angrily, breaking my gaze with defiance.

"You better come in, Bellatrix. There's a lot you need to learn."


	10. A Black Prophesy

****

And if you go,  
and leave me down here on my own,  
then I'll wait for you.

__

-Coldplay  


__

*

It starts with our mother, pregnant with you, walking through fields on a quiet summer morning, Narcissa begins. She never expected to meet anything more than a song bird. When she returned to the house, she was covered in burns.

Narcissa looks at her smooth white hands, still unlined after all these years. She's frozen so stiffly I doubt you could knock chips off her. We are sitting in the living room, which reminds me of a slightly cleaner and more expensively furnished version of the Riddle House; dark wood floor, looming fireplace, occult instruments and vintage firewhiskey sitting side by side in a stained glass cabinet. I can tell this a story she does not wish to tell, a story she blames me thoroughly for. I sit patiently, only wanting her to continue.

-She was attacked by a Heliopath. You may wonder what such a creature was doing, tearing its way through a silent English country morning. Father told me later that spirits have all the world to run free in, there is no way of keeping track of them or refusing them entry. In the end, we all have the same chance of being the unlucky one who finds themselves in its path, wherever we might be. 

'She returned to the house dragging herself on the knees, skin burned black and red raw, voice so ruined she could barely choke what happened. We were stunned she was still alive. I was four years old, but I still see her crawling across the flagstones like some charred excuse for a human, clear as day.

'We put her to bed, but did not call a Healer. There didn't seem to be any point, she was going to die and at least she would be in her own bed with her family around her. I cried into her sheets and listened to her ravaged snatches of breath and prayed her pain would end soon. But it didn't. She carried on fighting for breath until breathing became easier, and she could speak again and her skin repaired. After a week, she was able to walk all by herself and said that she could still feel you kicking. It was a miracle. We were amazed and overjoyed, the only tears I cried were of happiness. Until the mention of Grandmother's prophesy was brought up. That made us all fall quiet, including me, because even the youngest in the family understood the implications of the prophesy. 

I look at Narcissa, my heart pounding like meat thrown against a slab of marble. What Prophesy?

She's there when I sleep. I never dreamed until now, I did not think I knew how to. Dreaming is a weak pastime, for those who indulge in the imaginary, for those fools who love; for those who cannot control their mind. Dreaming can expose you, whisper dead hope and temptation into your soul, smilingly lead you to manipulation. The Potter boy allowed his godfather to die because he followed his dreams. 

It's all down to Bellatrix, this change in me. I feel like an oak in a storm. At first, small leaves of understanding swirl away from me, then whole branches of knowledge break and tear, swinging crazily in the breeze. If I do not catch her soon, I will fall crashing to the ground, roots ugly and twisted and bare. It is irrational. It is disgusting. I do not even know what I fear, or why her removed presence evokes such emotion. What is she to me? Just another Snape, another person to weave my lies around before the inevitable kill, a spider to a fly. 

But, of course, she isn't. I could pretend I worry for my son, but I do not. There could be a hundred sons, if I ordered it. There is, was, will be, only one Bellatrix Black. The thought of there not being one in this world, that I am to be the one to remove her - that must be what I fear. Yet more foundations are crumbling as I realise it. My power is ebbing away. I cannot contain it within myself anymore, I am losing control of how I use it, of what I am seeking. At first, this was all about the child. I needed her to get to him. But I want _her _now, only her, to be with me and look up to me and sit by the fire as she used to. The thought of relying on another human being, however marginally, appauls me. She has done this. To get back on the right path, to stop these useless feelings, I must deny myself and she must be eliminated. 

So I ought to be satisfied in my dreams; they will not last for long. 

-The prophesy was made by our great grandmother while she was on her death bed. She was 102 years old, blind and horribly weak. Our family has wasted many hours of talk arguing she was not in a healthy mind, that it was madness to believe in the prediction of a woman in her state. Yet the threat of the prophesy has remained, an unspoken cloud hanging over the house, the words etched into the skull of every Black who supported Voldemort. 

'What our great grandmother divined was this: A child of great importance with be born unto Elladora Black, one who will gain immense power at the womb. This power alone is what will bring about the death of Lord Voldemort and the freedom of all, magical and muggle alike. Yet gaining this power will come at a terrible price to the bearer, who will suffer the greatest tragedy in the wake of the Dark Lord's death. Both paths of destiny are open to the child of Elladora Black; she must chose between personal sacrifice and the sacrifice of countless souls. 

__

I look at Narcissa, see how she shakes with fear and loathing at these potent words. She does not need to tell me the reaction of the Blacks, I can see it perfectly in my mind. Fright. Shock. Terrible shame, that a member of a family so supportive of Lord Voldemort could be his downfall. There would have been meetings at night, behind closed doors, ferverent whispers to kill Elladora, to kill any children she bore. But no. They had to be careful. Purebloods killing purebloods was not the done thing, and the prophesy had left some leeway of hope. The bearer of the power could make a choice. It would just have to be seen to that they received the Darkest upbringing, became a follower of Voldemort, never discovered the power. Of course, no official record of the prophesy would have been submitted to the Ministry, the Blacks did not want their secret discovered. 

-After our mother's recovery, they knew the child in the prophesy must be you. One who will gain immense power at the womb, _that was what it said. The Heliopath had obviously been meant by fate to transfer some of its power to you. Mother survived not by some miracle but because of your strength. The supremacy of the fire spirit harnessed in you refused to let the vessel that carried it die. You were meant to live, play a role in events to come. _

'Remember that day in the park, with all the snow? I was afraid for myself, but curious as to what would happen to you. The Heliopath obviously saw you as its own, avoided you because its kindred cannot harm one other. I was only spared because your arms were around me, it thought my protection must be in your best interests. 

And it was, I say quietly. If I were such a threat, why did you let me get so close to you?

She fixes my glare for the first time. Because, she says coldly, I was instructed to. By father. He told me to make sure you stayed on the right journey, by any means possible. He would not have shame brought on his family, not by me, not by you. 

It was all an act_? I gape. No. she's lying. She felt the same as me, that we could never be parted, that we were blended together. _

-Yes, Bellatrix. I kept you as corrupted as I could, and I thought I did a very good job of it, until you turned up today. Now I know that I failed, all our efforts failed. You have set yourself against Voldemort with the means inside you to destroy him. You have enchanted flames within, the flames of an immortal spirit. Surely you've felt them, at times of great pain or happiness?

I remember how I used to love sitting by the fire, how I became a fireball myself when he performed the cruciatus curse on me. I know she's telling the truth, the whole truth. I never knew there was a truth to tell.

I rarely receive letters. Or, rather, I rarely bother to read them. That is Wormtail's job. It is left in his unreliable hands to sort what is important from the general rabble. At first, when reading this one, I thought that he had failed me yet again. On a more thorough inspection, the letter turned out to be one of the most important I had ever received.

While it is imperative you not to give up searching for the traitor, it is Important you realise she will be very hard to Find. Even if you look from Here to America, she will remain So well hidden underground we could never trace her easily. Bellatrix is too cunning for us.

It came to me unsigned, but I recognised the handwriting and what must have happened to the person it belonged to.

Luciuswas under the Imperius spell. The layers of the letter perfectly represented his condition of mind; at the surface, all obedience was made to the instructions set to him, underneath he was fighting to throw away the mask and show his true intentions . Perhaps using the code had been subconscious, or perhaps through the dreamy fug he had managed to piece together some desperate plan. I did not know. By conjoining the irregular capitalisation of the words, what I did know was WIFE HAS Bellatrix. And surely, that was all that I needed. 

- You have the power, Bellatrix, but do you have the boldness to use it? Think what it would mean. You're what they would call 'evil'. You've murdered, tortured, brought pain and misery to the families of thousands. You seem to think that you've had some sort of epiphany, that you've become this shining embodiment of freedom. Do you really think you committed those deeds under the Dark Lord's _spell? I'll tell you why you committed them. Because you like it. Instead of taking away your freedom, he handed it to you on a shiny silver plate and you give it all up for a life of struggle. Only under his rule could you have satisfied that yearning within, so what are you left with now? A half-life, a pathetic clamour for the force of 'good'. Yet you can't even do _that_ properly without reverting to the old ways. The first thing you do is go out and take another life. Face it, Bellatrix. You havn't changed. You need the safety of his law, you need him to sanction the things you do. What are you, without him? You are not yourself, you are a poor reinvention. I would not like to live like that, if I were you._

I stare at her, this frozen queen alone in her cavernous house, alone for many years lost in such sparse thin air, veins solidifying to dark winter cables, eyes set in her head like painted rocks. She needed me as much as I needed her. I prevented her from this, for as long as I was around, I kept her from turning to stone. But what happened when I finally slipped away? She's a Death Eater's wife. They all end up the same, those too scared or brainwashed or delusional to break away. Living for so long without love, or even belief in the existence of love, with the only notion of human relationships being breeding or killing does this to a person. I know. This was me, for sixteen years. 

I take a good look at my sister, mentally severing the ties. My foolish dream is over. 

-Narcissa. I am what I am. I never professed to be good, I never said I harboured qualms about killing. I still don't. I am prepared to strike you dead this minute, if the need arises. What makes me different from you is, I have realised the world according to Voldemort is very different to that which those who are free live in. Voldemort's Order is based on lies, he claims there is no such thing as good, or bad, or love or hate. His lies controlled me, controlled all of us, and we wreaked our destruction on their false authority. That is not freedom, Narcissa. You are confusing my desire with the truth. The sooner you realise that the sooner you'll understand that I would have killed people anyway, even if I hadn't become a Death Eater. I would have justly been myself, not acting on another's whim with a censored mind. I will always be cruel, and a murderer, yet I also accept that I can love. One thought does not cancel out another, not any more. And that is to be truly free.

For several minutes, Narcissa stares at me, a mixture of blankness and disbelief and incredulity carved into her ice sculptured face.

You don't understand a word I just said, do you? 


	11. fire within

****

Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.   
_-**Exodus 15:6 **_  


__

I don't know how I stand this. I don't know how I manage to get up every morning, to force every bone, sinew, electrical impulse of the mind to channel this excruciating power. It feels like burning the veins and arteries and soft tissue from around my heart, then exherting so hard it bursts clean out of my chest. As soon as the wound re-heals I have to do it all over again. And again. 

Mostly, I direct the fire from the palms of my hands, though in theory it can come from any point of my body. Once I made the mistake of shooting it from my mouth like a dragon. Agony. It was days before my tongue grew back. 

I didn't realise this power came at a price. It seems the human body really wasn't designed to shoot jets of enchanted fire up to lengths of 50 feet. I can only stand one attack at a time, and I can only keep the flames out for two minutes at maximum before the pain becomes physically unbearable. If I stay for any longer than that, the fire gets out of control and starts to spring out in little flames all over my body. I face the very real danger of burning myself alive. It seems ironic that the very thing that is going to protect the rest of the human race is what could probably kill me. Or, indeed, that the power that harms me is what I rely on to heal me. These burns, these gaping holes of charred flesh, only stay open for a couple of hours. Then, the spirit of the Heliopath starts working its magic and my wounds cover over with tender white waxy skin. This is what my mother went through when she was pregnant with me; this is how I saved her. 

The first time I managed to do this, at five months pregnant when it was still comfortable to stand and my back didn't ache so badly, I wore the pain as a badge of honour. Look at me, look how I suffer for my power, look how I've earned _this. It's worse than Azkaban. At least then I felt I was suffering for a worthy cause, that when I broke out I would be rewarded beyond measure. All I feel now is alone and struggling against an unstoppable force. I may have the potential to kill Voldemort, but what if a two minute blast at him isn't enough? I can't stand any more than two minutes and I can't attack him for hours afterwards - the power seems to sink back and coil into a ball at my very core, and I havn't the will or energy to draw it out again. _

Yet if I do kill him, what will become of me? I am to suffer the greatest tragedy in the wake of the Dark Lord's death. _I can only guess this means I'll be killed myself. Weak from the Heliopath's power and having just murdered the master of many ruthless Death Eaters, without any followers of my own to help me, it will only be a matter of hours before they hunt me down. By then, I'll welcome the relief. Even if I lived, nobody's going to celebrate the work of a Death Eater, especially that of a Death Eater like me. They won't know I ever left him, the papers will probably put his death down to an accident I made. Some contrived story, fed to them by Lucius or another man in power. _

Never more have I wanted to chose the other path open to me, the path that will let Voldemort survive, let him carry on with his plan to create the super-race. I could still Be Somebody. I could still be free. But to me, it's like choosing between a long death and a short. Eventually they'd catch up with me, and I'd end up the same. Perhaps I'd have bought myself a couple of months, started a life in which I made the decisions. But I don't start things I can't finish. 

Lucius's letters, after the first, were just as vague and uninformative. I tried summoning him to me, looking into his mind, but all I found was a mist-covered well, a well too dark and deep and ever-changing to glean any real truth from. Such is the state of the spellbound. 

He knew she was burning the bodies he was instructed to bring home. He knew she thought I could be killed in a similar way. Why, I asked him? And how is she controlling the flame? None of my questions could be answered. I bided my time. There was no urgency to bring her here, where she could potentially cause the embarrassment of being able to damage me. It was best to keep her where she thought she was safe, wrapped in secret, a place she would not run from. I did not want the child now. It had missed its opportunity to gain a perfect existence. The times to perform any of the alteration spells were very specific, and the child had already missed two. It might as well be killed at birth. 

As I sent the Death Eaters on new missions, as I carried on with my normal murder of faceless dissenters, I thought of Bellatrix as a mother. It was one of the few things I could not perceive, Bella giving herself to another. Nor could I envisage her killing him. Not because she would feel any remorse or pity; Bella is of the impression that everything she does had purpose, that she never makes mistakes. It is this pride that would prevent her from killing her own. Her ego is too great to destroy even a small part of itself, even a part contained in the body of another. I, on the contrary, would have no problem with the murder of my child. My own ego works in quite a different way. It is intolerant of anything that can match its ability. 

Which brings us back to the matter of Bellatrix's death. Lucius, in his dim coded monotone, managed to inform me that she is of great power, but she is weary. Pregnancy is as gruelling as it looks, especially in these late stages. She can hardly stand, he writes. He can hear her groan in pain behind closed doors. I think of her, burying her face into her pillow, trying to stopper that shameful primal emotion she had thought she would never feel. Narcissa would know. Like the princess and the pea, however far she was from her sister and however small the agony, Narcissa would know the pain she experienced, and try to ignore it. Narcissa was not what she had been. I had had the perfect vantage point in the shadows, those years ago when I groomed Bellatrix to be a Death Eater. Their relationship, on Narcissa's part, had started as just another little favour for Daddy. I believe he wished Bellatrix to be an active follower of mine, though the exact reason he was so assertive in his wishes is unknown. He was a petty, proud man. He probably wanted a share of the glory himself, like Rodolphus. Women always marry their fathers. 

Narcissa had not liked Bellatrix as a child. She associated her with danger and kept well away, choosing instead to let the clouds of isolation bloom around her, to keep away from harm by hiding within herself. She may have spent her whole life like this. It is how she spends her time these days. She reverted back to the old ways the moment Bellatrix was imprisoned. Without her, she freezes, sinks so deeply into the glacier of her own self-importance that nobody would care enough to break their way through. 

Narcissa remembers her relationship with Bellatrix as a time when she was not herself. She treats this as a token of both love and loathing. Love because it was, and will be, the only time she felt anything that was not covered with a veneer of frost and distain, and the only time this feeling had been reciprocated. She loathes the memory because it is gone forever, because Bellatrix did not allow her to be herself, made her feel too deeply for another person, gave her a taste of what the world is like for other people and then left her to deal with her loss forever. 

I imagine that seeing her sister again has dragged up a lot of old conflict and resentment in Narcissa. She looks at Bellatrix, who is so eager to unite and so desperate for support, and turns away and leaves her alone, as Bella once left her. She wants a way to stop the suffering, to break from this limbo of neither having the guile to bring her to me or the valour to explain her feelings. I pen a letter to Narcissa in my finest hand, and I present to her a way.

She smiled at me tonight. After months of clipped remarks and cold silences, she came into my room and placed her hand on the hillock in the blanket that covered my 8 and a half month bump. Said it wouldn't be long now. Asked me what I was going to do when it came. 

I studied her for a while, the shape of her face highlighted by the moonlight flooding through the curtains. So frozen, so beautiful. She could be preserved for hundreds of years and she wouldn't change. 

I told her I didn't know. In a rare, candid moment between sisters, I told her I hadn't let myself think that far. I hated this baby had been forced on me against my will, hated the circumstances it had been conceived in. I didn't think I could ever look at it without remembering and hating. I was almost sorry it had escaped the treatment of spells that would ensure it would be a perfect follower, that I couldn't just have it taken out of my hands. Now I had to make a decision. Would I abandon it? Kill it? Look after it myself? I had never wanted children, even when Rodolphus insisted on trying for one. For the Dark Lord, he said. The irony of my life astounds me.

Narcissa's caring demeanour slipped a little at the point. Her lips pursed, her forehead wrinkled and I knew she was thinking of her own child, Draco. She had painfully refused him coming home from Hogwarts at Christmas so my stay would go undetected. I had offered to put him under Imperius, then perform a memory charm on him at the end of the holidays, but my offer had been flatly denied. It was hard enough to live with Lucius already under my spell, who had to be instructed even to kiss her. I don't think she could have bore another zombie member of the family. Instead, we spent Christmas as every other day; me out in the snow practising my incineration on cats and dead bodies brought home by Lucius and trying not to burn down any trees, Narcissa inside, alone. Probably wishing me dead, but not taking the necessary action to make it so. I know as well as she does how easily she could have it arranged. 

I'm not sure how long we can hold out with this relationship of ours, even after tonight's truce. My plans have changed. Now that I've discovered the implications of my powers, it hardly matters when I attack Voldemort. Since it is too late for the child to be given the perfect follower's spell treatment, I doubt he would try to avoid killing it anyway. Waiting for it to be born, recovering and then going to Voldemort will mean I stay for Easter, which means Draco remains at Hogwarts, which means Narcissa's animosity will swell to bursting point. Yet, I cannot fight him in this condition. I am too exhausted, too in pain from back ache and spasmodic contractions. Sometimes I lose my balance and fall into the soft April earth, have to wait for Narcissa to find me and help me to my feet. I look down at my angelic shape pushed into the black soil and think how this isn't right. The sky is where my mark should be.

I pressed my hands to the bump, trying to fit them into the invisible outlines her own had left. I closed my eyes tight, so tightly the tender flesh squashed to bruise. I felt buried deep in space, airless screams swallowed before they left my lungs. At that moment, I was as alone as I could ever be. The pressure of the dropped baby's head and the painful kicks against my ribs increased the sentiment. 

And then she handed me a drink. I gulped it down, desperate to be full_, and it felt as dark and warm and sweet as her unfamiliar smile. That'll knock you out for a couple of hours, she said. I watched her watch me fall asleep._

Goodnight, Bellatrix. 

Her cheek glittered, as if set with a tiny, well cut diamond. 

This is how it should really be. 

I close my eyes for the slightest of moments, feeling light golden air like soft hands on my skin, feeling that old metallic rush in my mouth. Bellatrix lies in an ungraceful heap below me, the breeze lifting her dark hair and blowing strands of grass against her cheek. Now my eyes are resting on her, the backdrop of the house blurs, Narcissa's spindly figure thins to nothing, the approaching Wormtail becomes little more than an inky sunspot. I wish to watch her wake without his interruption, without having to touch his Mark and summon the Death Eaters. As if hearing my bidding - she always hears my bidding - Bellatrix stirs, her face contorted with pain, her knees drawn up to her abdomen. Another contraction, closer this time. She's been having them in her sleep. Not even _their_ pain could wake her, whilst set against the Dormancy Draught I supplied to her sister.

Narcissa would not approach me, so I approached her. Told her I'd been in contact with Lucius for months, that I wanted her to give me Bellatrix, that I knew everything. _Everything_? Came her written reply. _I assume you want her anyway. Am I to be the first to call you a fool and escape with my life? I do not care if I am not. You aren't wholly a fool, I'll merit you that. At this time, when she is weakest and on the brink of giving birth, you are the closest you could be to victory when set against her power. So take her and do what you like. I await your instructions and death at your hand for the impertinence of this message._

I allowed myself a tight, quick smile at my own expense and replied with a package of potion that would send Bellatrix into a deep sleep. Narcissa was to choose a day when Bella was at her lowest ebb, then bring her to me via floo. Waiting for their arrival was rather like being a normal wizard waiting for Christmas, it amused me to realise. 

As Bellatrix's eyes flicker open, their black opal spotlight reduced to a dull charcoal smudge, Wormtail appears at my right, his podgy left forearm proudly displayed. A wispy presence at my left conveys Narcissa has also arrived. Looking from Bellatrix, in her bemused, groping state, to the solid scalding Mark, I hesitate, but only for a second. Then I place my finger firmly in the centre of the brand and wait as my followers come to watch the festivities. 

It is only a minute before the customary ring has been formed around us, leaving a clear circle of grass for Bellatrix to wake in, to pull herself to her knees and gaze around with bleary eyes. To occasionally double over so I only hear a muffle of her grinding teeth. 

So, Bellatrix, I say with my voice at its highest and haughtiest, You have chosen to return!

The Death Eaters laugh, the low rumble of sound ricocheting against her skin, breaking the pale morning air with its malice.

-Did you enjoy your little holiday, Bellatrix? I've been hearing all sorts about what you got up to. It seems the Potter boy was your greatest rival. He had to be got rid of, didn't he? You couldn't have somebody walking around, containing more _love_ than _you_. 

She looks up through her hanging back hair like she's looking at me through poisoned ivy. 

- If that's your way of provoking me, Voldemort, then you are obviously out of practise. You go to the trouble of making one of your little stooges bring me all the way here, just so you can poke your petty insults. You've lost your touch. You've reverted to childhood. 

It is her turn to laugh.

I mock surprise. 

- I'm not trying to provoke you, Bellatrix. Think of this as an old chat between friends. And, like an old friend, I'm interested in your travels. Tell me, at what point did you discover what you like to call 'the truth'? For those of you that do not know, faithful Death Eaters, Bellatrix's 'truth' idolises the existence of love and its opposite, hate. Bellatrix believes that _she _can love, that indeed, she has _been_ loved; once, long ago. She does not think she is a fool to have loved.

I glance at Narcissa, who stands very still, very white and tall, like a silver birch on a windless day. 

- The one who she owned the affections of was not created for such a purpose. Love distorted her. It changed her in ways she would have preferred not to be changed. And the absence of love left her bitter and malicious, and drove her to asking me to kill the one who had done this to her. The laughter seems to have died in your throat, Bellatrix. Do not worry. I understand. I know what it is, to be betrayed by the person you want it to be least.

At these words, her head whips up again, and she smiles at me through the pain. A devious smile, beautiful against that strained, drained face.

- Want? I thought you carried feelings equal bearing for all your followers. No differentiating. Nothing so personal as _desire _for another's compassion. _My _compassion, in particular. You aren't as immortal as you think, Voldemort. I can read your mind like a cheap Quibbler, and what I see is exactly fitting to my 'truth'. You're just the same as me, except less powerful, as I have been given the greater force - a power that has been prophesised to destroy you.

I snort and advance closer, stand above her to show that I am the one on my feet, while she cannot even stand.

-Let me see this power then. This great and divine power of yours, sent to smite me and bring peace to wizardkind. Even your _power_ is melodramatic. As insubstantial and greeting-card as that pathetic speech you just garbled. When are you going to open your eyes and see what's real, Bellatrix? When are you going to scrape away the illusion? You live in a false world now. A world that preaches the existence of courage, and battles between 'good' and 'evil', and dreams and hope and _love_? You once saw so clearly. You stood by my side and blended in to me, you saw through my eyes. There is only power. Nothing else.

Yes, she replies. Nothing else.

In one lightning, agonising movement she leaps to her feet, sending a jet of fire straight towards my heart. 


	12. the truth

****

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free

__

-John 8:32 

*

__

I'm at the deepest I've ever reached. Like scraping through the earth to its centre, to crushing, compacted, pure liquid fire. Unimaginable pain - I've drilled a hole through skin and bone and soft spongy flesh, through parts of myself that should never be penetrated. It's as if I'm funnelling my soul straight from all these ruptured membranes, onion layers of myself, and shooting it from my palms to be absorbed into the atmosphere, lost forever. I feel I will drop dead at any moment. My melting eyes stream, my skin bubbles like cellophane near a flame, my hair stands on end like a black lightning bolt. I'm coming apart. Any minute I'll silently explode, a supernova flattening out across the empty death of space, creating a million new stars. 

Just as the splits begin to appear, just as I feel my edges blurring against the pain, a mighty contraction brings my cells crunching together. It's like being enclosed in a celestial fist. I am the universe now, with every big bang comes an expansion, then contraction. I am kept whole only by pain, be it in the body or in the soul.

I've been standing here since I can remember, I'm in an alternate dimension, a fireball under a purple sky. Nothing else matters now, nothing but concentrating my power on the one who deserves death the most. My own death in the process is of little consequence. The circle of followers - I cannot see their faces, only hear their chant - shoot any number of killing curses at me, but they ping away like pebbles against iron. I am transformed now, unstoppable. He probably thought he was clever, bringing me here. He probably thought I would be too weak to fight, that this would be easy. He was wrong. These contractions are real, they strip me down, release the fastenings on the gateways to my core. The baby moves inside me, and for once I welcome it with the sweetest of temperaments. Having a child brings you closest to your own mortality, brings you closest to your power. I thank Voldemort. He has brought about his own downfall. If I just keep going, if I just keep pushing, letting the fire flow, ignoring the pain, ignoring the fluids running down my legs, ignoring the smell of charred flesh and screeching spells and laughter-

One person's laughter is uglier than the rest. Uglier, even, than my own primal screams. I force my eyes to open, to focus through the stinging tears and smoke and see the truth. He looks back, a man engulfed in flame, a man at the centre of some divine force field. His insane smile is distorted by the roaring flames and shivering liquid air, but in his eyes lies pure, unwavering triumph. I am falling, imploding, gateways shutting down, fire spluttering. We both know who's won. We both know who is really the universe, who holds the power. What hope did I really have? An untrue prophesy, an untrue sister. Power that, at it's height, cannot even kill the laughter at Voldemort's lips. 

Yet still I live, for few frail seconds, in the hope that we are both wrong, that all I need to defeat him is one final surge forward. I reach within myself for my redemption, and find none. The pathway is sealed. The contractions continue, but the belief I held has been dissolved from just one look into his eternal eyes. 

I am spent, empty. The fire regresses to my hands and flames drip from Voldemort, dying in the grass like swatted insects. Death Eaters' shrieks grow loud and insistent, the sting of their spells tangible. In a moment what little power I still possess inside my hollow shell will have drained away. I will be hit, my legacy in ruins. For a few precious seconds, I watch the scene from above. I am half standing, a bloody mess that was once a woman, a tidal wave of smoking mud spreading out around me. A ring of identical faces surround, firing spells as if echoing yelled orders. The superficial aesthetics scraped away, with only their consciousness lucid enough to defend them, they are presented only as ruined extensions of Him. Mutations of power. Crippled slaves. 

It is this vision that lends me the last of my reserves. A great wash of pity, buried and unused for many years, engulfs me and sprays from my body at its own accord. Small jets of flame shoot from my skin in all directions, claiming a follower's life from every part of the circle except one. It cannot touch where I feel no pity, where only my hate can penetrate. 

Maybe Voldemort carries almost an immortal protection, but his supporters are only human. I catch a glimpse of a face, one amalgamated face, and the horror and pain and beauty that lights it from inside. And then it's gone. The last thing I see, as I lie collapsed in the mud, is the ash of the dead floating freely in the sunlight.

I feel comfortable, almost serene, standing over Bellatrix in this fashion. It feels like old times. I am masterful, inhuman, ever-powerful. At the back of my mind, something rebukes me. You're playing a mime. Face up to the truth, nothing has changed. You can't kill her like this. She deserves more.

Bellatrix lies flat on her back, arms stretched out at either side, eyes closed, moaning in pain. Damp black hair plasters her face, dark gashes across her palms bleed profusely. This image reminds me of something. A book I threw away in revulsion, a painting that hung in the orphanage which illuminated at night. Somebody who died, long ago.

I flex my fingers and aim my wand determinedly. All I have to do is say the words. That is all I have to do to end it, return to my original state; return to my perfection. My head hums with a thousand notes of protest, my hand shakes like a white flower burst into bloom. She moans again, screws her face in agony and falls limp. This isn't Bella; it is somebody thoroughly without the will to continue. This person hasn't even the conviction to open her eyes, let alone deliver a baby. She will die, whether it be at my hand or not. And I, in shame and confusion, chose not.

Putting the wand away, feeling the violet breeze break against my skin like a fast flowing river, I sit distractedly in the mud beside her. A circle of charred marks surround us, one for every Death Eater incinerated. I try to feel shocked, angry, a need to make Bellatrix pay for what she has destroyed. A whole army in ruins, an enormous section of my support demolished. Yet all I do feel is emptiness, in anticipation of life after she's gone. If she were to stay, I am positive we could build the Order again, that we could still gain ultimate power. A strange and horrible sensation almost knocks me from my reverie. I am _wishing_. I am putting my hope and trust in another, I am imagining a future different from one with myself as the soul benefactor. I realise, in a stark crash of terrible insight, that it will be worse once she is dead. I will spend my days in total isolation, without the will to start rebuilding, just my own broken mind to take refuge in. I will spend my days dreaming she is with me. 

Narcissa's hand takes my own, prises it away from covering my face. I cannot look at her, but I know how she must appear. The ice has melted, exposing vulnerably, crooked lines, tender skin. Her real face. Before, Narcissa would have known the implications of touching me out of turn. That doesn't matter now. My followers fill the air, my command left behind. The future awaits as a murdered beast - the glorious reign, the millions of perfect followers, Bellatrix. Forced to live knowing what could have been, but never will be. All has perished. 

- I…I don't understand. You've given up. Why won't you kill her? That's why I brought her here, that's why I forfeited any love that might still remain for me. For you, _master_. And now you can't do it. Why? 

- She's going to die anyway. She'll bleed out, or choke on the mud.

-You didn't answer the question.

I don't reply. In a time before, Narcissa would have been killed instantly for such petulance. Now, neither of us care for our own lives enough to follow the normal rules.

- You can still save her, if you want. Help her give birth to the child. It is yours too. Even if it hasn't had the treatment, it could still follow you. A child doesn't need to be cursed to love its father.

- It was never love I seeked, Narcissa. You know that. Power is all I want.

- Maybe it was, then. You can't say the same now and really mean it. Power isn't all _I_ want. Bellatrix showed me that. We all contain some degree of love, a need to be loved and to return it. Sometimes that can be a fatal flaw, like in the case of you or I. People like us weren't meant to ever feel like this - and if it happens, if we are unfortunate enough to meet someone with the cunning to draw it out of us, it destroys us. It is the same for an ordinary person who kills their lover in a fit of rage. Sooner or later, the guilt will gnaw them away to nothing. They end up dead, or worse.

- What are you trying to say, Narcissa?

- However much we hate her, however much we want to twist her round so she submits to how we want to live our lives, the fact remains that we love her as well. We love her so much we want to kill her, just so we can finally rid ourselves of how she makes us feel. But, of course, we can't kill her, because to love is to possess. And you would never give away your most valuable possession, no matter how much it wanted to get rid of _you._

I do not protest. I sit numbly, watching the blood flowing from Bellatrix's blistered hand. It is strange to believe somebody else's truth. 

- Leaving her to bleed out or choke is just the same as using a wand. You have to _do_ something. You have to heal her, however much you hate what you have to do to achieve it. Think of the other options. This is the best. She's dying because she poured so much of herself into trying to stop you. She has nothing left to sustain herself with. You will have to halt the bleeding by pouring _your_self into _her_.

Why can't you do it, if you love her so much? I snap, terrified and confused and cowardly.

Narcissa paused. A tear fell onto the hand that still gripped mine.

- She'll believe it if it comes from you.

__

He gave me a potion. Parted my lips with spindly fingers, poured something light and sparkling down my throat. It settled inside me like a butterfly drying its wings. 

That will ease the pain, he said, in a voice of hushed snowy mornings, a voice I'd heard long ago from the lips of somebody else. That will ease the pain.

I closed my eyes. I waited for the pain to subside. And gently, it did, like a memory locked away. I was able to turn away from it and contemplate other things, though, as with any memory, I could never truly forget. 

I spent my spell away from the world thinking of earlier times. Times where I killed or mutilated, licking the blood from my hands as I left. Times when I was happy, the cool scent of my sister clinging to the air around me. The time when I was free, in a stream I can visit only in my dreams. 

Presently, an intruder invaded this private reel. An intruder who crept around the edges of my consciousness, who used a voice I couldn't discern, in my anaesthetised state, from the present or the past. 

- The baby is doing well, Bellatrix. I still can't believe we managed to save you both. I still expect you to drop dead any second. I told Voldemort about the prophesy, after he had saved you. He wanted to know everything. That's what he said - Tell me everything_. He felt he deserved the whole truth, after doing what he did. You two are going to have a lot to talk about when you wake up properly. _

I didn't try to form an answer, simply moaned and struggled to block out this unwelcome stranger.

- Don't try to open your eyes. Just lie still and listen to me. I told him how to save you. Don't ask me why I did it. You'll work it out, in time. Perhaps you know already. Whatever it is, this is where our paths must separate. This is where we're on our own. And- and I just hope that you can remember me, sometimes, and remember that whatever father told me to do, I only did it in the end because you made me love you. I hate you for that. You were right about the truth, Bellatrix, you were right when you told me what it was to be free. One feeling doesn't cancel out the other. In the end, we have to accept we are humans, not Followers. We can kill who we like.

Like a shock of cold water, I felt a pair of lips touch my own, brittle and bitten through. Blood seeped into my mouth, spidery hands grabbed my face in feeble brutality. Even in my daze, I felt alarm, a ferverent wish for this wretched charade to cease. 

Avada Kedavra, she whispered against my face.

When I regained enough feeling to open my eyes, I saw Narcissa was lying dead on the floor by my bed. Her eyes were open and the sky was a mocking, beautiful blue. 


	13. Mirach

****

Then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day.

__

- Plato

*

We buried her beneath the trees, where she would always be covered with shadow and pale yellow flowers. Bellatrix chose the spot. She refused to look at the child, refused to answer its screams until she had said goodbye to her sister. We stood over the hole for several minutes before we lowered Narcissa in, looking into the darkness while the darkness looked into us. I wondered what it saw. I had changed considerably since this morning, both in body and in mind. Bellatrix, wrapped in waxy grief, had not noticed. She had paid as little attention to me as she had to the baby. 

The April evening air bit at our fingers and breathed coldly through our robes. Dark blue clouds bruised the sodden sky. I could hardly see Narcissa's body through the gloom, it was so translucent and ghostly at the bottom of the hole. Solemnly, unflinchingly, Bellatrix threw a handful of earth into the open mouth of the hole. Then another. I watched as her sister slowly disappeared. First the pallid, angular face, then the slim shoulders and long white arms, the spindly legs. Once the first layer of earth had covered her, had blotted out any remaining colour, her toes still pointed upwards through their deathly covering and strands of fine, ice blond hair snaked out and wavered in the breeze. I looked swiftly at Bella, wondering if this was to be the first time I would see her cry. Her eyes, luminescent as each pupil mirrored the rising moon, remained dry, though deep lines of pain cleaved her face. I knew she had to do this now. Had had to bury Narcissa as quickly as possible, if she were ever going to start her journey down the path to a new future. Though it broke her heart to throw mud into her dead sister's face, though every time she covered a little more of her body from view her arm resisted with increased vigour, she still continued. Even through the grief of her sister's departure, Bellatrix was looking after her own best interests. It was easier to let go now while the pain was still fresh then to let herself stagnate, wallow in the past, refuse to believe her sister was gone for weeks on end. Subjecting herself to the rawest of cruelties now would save her from creating them later. 

I watched her pat the last of the earth on top of the grave with palms that, although healed, must have still stung. I watched her through new, appreciative eyes. Every movement she made had some sort of purpose, every decision she reached sparkled as if it had been cut cleanly from reams of disorder with a sharp razor of truth. Not just her truth, but an ultimate truth that only few could envision. She made believing in it seem so easy. I was a testimony to how hard it really was. Having to accept that my whole outlook on the world was wrong, that I had never realised the existence of something with such vital importance, was unbearable. I wished Bellatrix had never discovered the truth. If I had not allowed myself a few minutes' superfluous exploitation of power, she never would have. I realised that at this very minute, we could still be enjoying the old type of life, cocooned away in our own delirious, desirable world. I was to blame for where we were today. 

The child's splitting wail erupted from inside the house, carried through the dark air to spoil the graveside reverie. A rude interruption from the future, like the last call of a near-departing train. Go now or stay here forever. Her eyes, for the first time, focused on mine. 

"We won't be coming back" she said quietly, her voice blending in with the surrounding gloom.

She turned away from me and walked back in the direction of the house. With the weary, hateful acknowledgment of one who loves, I followed her. 

__

I watch him. He does not return my glare. Of course he doesn't, that is not something this new, half-person would do. I think of all the different Voldemorts I have known and admired. The proud young stranger in the kitchen of Grimmauld place (though he wasn't a stranger, not really, not ever). The master in his chair, face under-lit by flames and shadows for eye sockets. The resurrected God, power made flesh. I think of these and smile at the memory, smile at former feelings that, however disagreeable now, still carry a vestige of beauty, like the whisper of a dream between sleeping and rising. Now I look upon what all these creations have amounted to, and whatever heart I have seems to sink. His figure was fixed, in my mind at least. For as long as I was alive, so would he be, an unchanging monument to hate. What place does he hold now? What place is there for a creature who has lost his self_?_

"It's a girl" Bellatrix says dully, plucking one swollen, blue webbed breast from her robe and feeding it into the baby's mouth. "You always said it was going to be a boy."

I watch her in mild interest for a moment before I reply.

"I assumed it would be a boy. I expected an heir, and believed the sheer power of my will would make it so. Do you remember when Wormtail showed us the photograph of it? I was so sure of its gender I did not ask him to check."

We ponder this in silence. She sits cradling the baby at one end of my bed, I sit watching her from the other. The air between us seems leaden, impenetrable. The thought of moving through the gap and actually touching her seems impossible. I wonder, tentatively, shamefully, testing untrodden ground in my shifting mind, whether I _want_ to touch her. Isn't that what being in love is about? I do not feel in love at all. More like an unwilling acceptance that this woman will always be on my mind, wherever she is, whatever she is doing. I could live without ever laying a finger on her again as long as I knew that she was still with me. 

She's looking at the child with a strange, soft gleam in her eye. Narcissa was right. Love is possession, among other things.

"I'm going to call her Mirach. She has her own star, just like Sirius and I."

I don't reply. It is hard to look at this child, now it has a name. A name makes it harder to confront my supposed responsibility. Bellatrix seems to know this. She looks at me from beneath lowered eyelashes for several minutes, as if assessing the risks, before softly unhooking the baby from her breast and holding it out towards me. 

"There's something about you that's changed" she says. "Somehow, I feel I can trust you to hold her without killing her".

I regard the small, black haired, pink skinned child proffered to me. It squirms like a fish on a line. It screws its face up and begins to scream. I do nothing. Sighing, Bellatrix retracts the child and begins to feed it again.

"I trust _you_ won't be killing her, Bellatrix. I never imagined you as a mother. I'm sure you didn't either. I'm sure you thought about killing her a thousand times, before now."

"I did. I will always hate you for what you did to me, but I cannot hate Mirach. I can only love her. It isn't her fault how she came into this world."

I pause, suddenly frightened. _How she came in to this world_. I hope Bellatrix doesn't remember - she was unconscious, but I still feel nervous. I hope she doesn't remember what I did, to save them both. Even _I_ don't want to remember that. The memory makes me physically sick with pain. I spent hours recovering afterwards, while Bellatrix slept on the painkilling potion. Even now, I feel a dull aching all over, especially when in close proximity with either Bella or the baby.

"Are you going to explain your new appearance?" she asks me, still looking down at the child, a little smile playing on her lips. "Or how I survived at all?"

She doesn't remember. I am elated. I try to look into her mind, just to check, but come up against a blank wall. She's giving nothing away. The truth has made her mind her own.

"You had lost a lot of your own soul. Souls can rebuild themselves if there is anything left as foundations, but it takes a long time and you were nearly dead. Narcissa performed some spells that would speed up the process and revive you. I got in the way of one of them."

She considers this as a teacher considers a transparent excuse for forgotten homework.

"You should have killed me. That's what you brought me there for. But you didn't kill me at all, you let me be saved, have the baby, even…"

She was about to mention burying Narcissa, but finds it too painful. Her sister is only an hour in her grave. She composes herself and continues.

"And now we're sitting here together with our _baby, _and we're having a conversation, and you still havn't killed me, even though you know I couldn't stop you if you tried. _Why_?" She looks at me intently, penetratingly.

I can think of no answer to give her. 

__

He's changed. It is like he's been replaced with a watered down version of himself. Where he once resonated power, he is left with weak will. Where he once exuded cold calculation, mathematical blood-tinted vision; he now sees in dreams and wavering suggestions. Most people progress, are re-written, when they experience a change. I am proof of that. Voldemort, however, is steadily fading away into nothing. The absence of tyranny does not reveal any underlying character. Instead, it reveals thin air. This was all he had, all he was, and now it is slipping away. 

I brought this about. I was the key. The answer to how_ I was the key is waiting, somewhere between those precious, unconscious minutes I lay almost dead. This space of time still exists inside me. I can still answer the question, unlock the secret. It is simply a test of how determined I am to know it. At this moment, all I am concerned about is Mirach. _

Mirach. Another Black with another star to guide her. I hold her deep in my arms, and wonder what to do, how to feel. Of course, I already know. Love her. It scares me, to think that this is it, the rest of my life. Loving another, dedicating it all to her. I have never doubted I could do it - I never doubt anything of myself. What worries me is whether I want to do it. I want_ to want to do it, but when I search and try to grasp something solid that tells me I am a mother and I love her and I care for her, I draw a blank. It is all very well, preaching about love and how we all can possess it - I know I have the capacity, but can a woman such as me ever have the _ability_? Loving is a talent. You can either master it or you cannot. I am beginning to wonder whether my particular talents may lie elsewhere. Saying the words, feeling those same old mundane, muggle bonds between parent and child, they do not rise the thrill in me as a killing would. I always thought loving another would be explosive, technicolour, sparkling with emotion. Yet, I hold Mirach in my arms and I feel…comfortable. Serene. Content. My life has always been one long scramble, a race to avoid being killed, ecstasy after ecstasy in bloodshed and in bed. I cannot conceive of a life any different. A life where the pace is easy, and there are boring days when I wish I had never learned the truth, and Mirach is screaming because she did something as normal as scrape her knee. _

Then I look at Voldemort, and know these days are not upon me quite yet. Not when he is around. I cannot truly continue towards my future, whatever it may be, with my past still unfinished business. 


	14. mirrors

**__**

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'what is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

-Dostoevski

__

You are the stars above my head

You are everything, I've no safety net

And I accept, I'm addicted

To this kiss

- Alisha's Attic, Resistor.

I watch her watch me through the window of the mirror. Our reflected eyes meet. I know this is an illusion, and that she can't see our faces together from the place in which she lies, yet I still imagine I convey some sort of message to her and make her finally understand. 

Letting my vision blur, I focus on my own reflection. I have seen it inflated on the backs of spoons, seen it ripple in plate glass puddles before my foot comes down to smash it, seen it laughing at me from the depths of my mind. But I have not seen it flat and real. I could not stand to. But the weakness in me is growing every day, human, mortal desires tightening their bonds in new and excruciating places. I succumb to the most human of cravings, to marvel my faults. I look into the mirror.

A stranger stares back at me. He used to be more than a man, but now he is less. His face was indescribable, above common classification. Now it is humanly ugly, humanly sad. The ludicrous red eyes sit uncomfortably next to sagging pale skin. This is a clown who cannot remove his paint, a shrunken prisoner buried alive. 

I turn away from the stranger, cannot bear to look any more. I look at Bellatrix instead. A surge of unquenchable wrath floods through me - how dare she be so beautiful when I must wear this costume forever? I collapse at the end of the bed, trying to clench my fists in rage. It is too painful. I am winded from the sudden movement, and double over to catch my breath. Rasping, pathetic. What happened to my dreams? I thought that if only I had her I could rebuild my power. But while she's here, power seems to be ebbing further and further from me. She's taken it all. If this is love then I wish to die. 

"What's wrong with you?" she snaps. Snaps angrily, but there's something else in her expression. Pity.

"Nothing of your concern" I hiss, as hatefully as I can muster. 

She pauses and shifts the sleeping child in her arms. Her eyes never leave me, though I refuse to stare back.

"There's so much going on underneath your surface. You've changed so dramatically. I want you to tell me about it. I have to understand. If we're ever going to escape from this situation, we have to let the whole truth out. Now say whatever you have to say, or rot like this forever."

"I never saw you as a therapist, dear Bella". Sarcasm. A flash from the old me, before he went wrong.

"I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing it for me. When I leave it's going to be forever. But I can't leave until we've finished this. So finish it. _Tell me what is going on._"

I look at her face, luminescent, open, lined with beauty and wreathed in black. Nothing seems to matter any more. I have lost all dignity, so what does it mean to let this final part of myself go? The wires twist tighter round my organs and when I speak it is almost a squeak. 

"You are my lifework, Bellatrix Black. The first time I saw you, you were fourteen years old and committing your first act of terrible, beautiful corruption. To seduce the enemy, to trap his mind into following to your own conclusions, to take his purity in unpure motives - I recognised myself in you and I was more excited than I had ever been. Here was a girl who could become my greatest follower, with the right guidance. Years before you saw me, I had shaped and moulded your existence to such a degree that you would have no choice but to become a Death Eater. The real truth, Bella, is that you should have been more than that. You _are_ more than that. I knew it on that first day by the stream, that you were to be my greatest rival, the person with the power to overthrow me. I thought that I could smother it by making you join me, by washing your mind blank of any original thought or search for your own power. But I failed. You can't fight the truth. It always outs in the end."

"I don't understand any of this; how you could have known me all that time; how you can think I am more powerful than you. Don't you remember I couldn't kill you? The prophesy was false-"

"The prophesy was _not_ false. Narcissa explained the story and it is clear to me that your family did not understand its wording - _A child of great importance with be born unto Elladora Black, one who will gain immense power at the womb. This power alone is what will bring about the death of Lord Voldemort and the freedom of all, magical and muggle alike. Yet gaining this power will come at a terrible price to the bearer, who will suffer the greatest tragedy in the wake of the Dark Lord's death. Both paths of destiny are open to the child of Elladora Black; she must chose between personal sacrifice and the sacrifice of countless souls. _The power you gained 'at the womb'was not the spirit of the Heliopath after the attack, it was Mirach."

I cannot keep my eyes from her now. She is perfectly still, looking into me intently, questioning and wary. Yet, still she twitches at my referral to the child by name. It is as much of a surprise to me as it is to her.

"What do you mean? The Heliopath gave me my power."

"The Heliopath gave you _a_ power. Not _the_ power. Remember, spirits are outside the stream of destiny. They cannot be controlled or harnessed. The attack was an unfortunate anomaly in destiny's design. You were not kept alive because of the power you gained then, you were kept alive because of the power you _were_ to gain. Destiny, as I have learned, cannot be sidestepped. Those with a purpose must fulfil that purpose. Yours was to give birth to my child. The child who is going to bring about my death."

"This makes no sense…I don't understand…"

"Think about it. You couldn't have killed the Potter boy without my child inside you. If you hadn't killed him, the other prophesy wouldn't have been fulfilled. If the other prophesy hadn't been fulfilled, then none of this would have happened, I would still be locked in combat with Potter and you would still be a Death Eater. The root of all this is me. I was the one who gave you the child-"

__

"Raped me_._"

"Raped you. I was the one who set events in motion. The all powerful one who created his own destruction."

"And what destruction is this? All I can see is a tiny baby."

"Destruction from the inside. After the rape, you realised the falsity of my Order, long before I did. You left. I have never been away from you. I've been right there behind you since you were fourteen years old. Your absence is like another person in the house, a tormentor. I did not realise what you meant to me until you left. I knew what I felt for you as soon as I couldn't possess you, but I pushed it to the back of my mind, I kept it hidden and denied. Instead I put my efforts into seeking you out. Saying, almost believing, that I would kill you. In the end, you almost killed yourself. And I had to save you. You said yourself that we all have the potential to love, and I replied that love was a weakness. It turns out we were both right. What I feel for you is killing me. My body and my mind cannot sustain it, not when it opposes everything I've ever thought and felt and understood. I created this body with only power in mind. Now it is coming apart."

She stares at me for some time, white hot with shock.

"So if you hadn't raped me, I would never have realised that your philosophy was wrong and I wouldn't have left you and murdered Potter. My leaving made you realise that you possessed love, a love that would inevitably kill you. The prophesy was right. Mirach is _my_ power, _your_ downfall."

A slow, delighted smile spreads across her face. I look towards the mirror and there she is, still grinning into my eyes. I do not doubt she can see me now.

"I hope you understand what this means. You _will suffer the greatest tragedy in the wake of the Dark Lord's death. _So enjoy your time with the child, it looks like she has served her _own_ purpose now."

With my last shred of flimsy strength, I pound across to the mirror and put my fist through our diabolical portrait. Just before the pieces hit the floor, I see it has changed. Those eyes are no longer bright with malice, but with tears.

*

__

I had made sure I forgot, all those years ago. I'd closed my eyes as we left the stream, let the journey wash away to simply leave the ending, the memory of clear light and being loved and freedom. I had returned many times to this place, perhaps to breathe frozen air or follow the loop of motions that played over and over, to sleep under a shelter of my own creation. But I had never wanted to return in the flesh.

He insists on walking the long way, though it tires him greatly. Every so often we pause and wait. It feels like we're waiting for his particles to re-align and settle, stall their inevitable collapse. There's shame in his eyes, overwhelming humiliation and despair. He cannot easily speak to me or look at me, refuses to hold my arm. I am glad of this. Seeing his own reflection in my eyes would finish him off.

Only when we reach the perimeters of the Black country manor do I realise the significance of our journey, why he despondently asked for this walk and my pity agreed. 

"This is where I first saw you, heading towards Hangleton Forest with the boy. I followed you for sport. I wanted something to kill." His laughter is thin, but not forced. It continues for as long as his strength allows. 

When we reach the outskirts of the forest, I turn back to take a last look at my family home. It's empty now. I can't think of anyone left to occupy it. 

"This way" Voldemort mutters, tracing the invisible path my fourteen year old self must have left. Regarding him, I notice how increasingly wasted and indefinable he becomes. Perhaps he is better described as the creature who was once Voldemort. Perhaps I should call him Tom, for these short hours we have together, call him by his human name. A name which he hates, and does not entirely fit. It seems that already he is nothing - unhuman, ungodly, unnatural. A shell.

Mirach gurgles from the depths of her blanket. Her crossed blue eyes peer up at me in uncomplicated curiosity and I look back in sorrow. I try, and fail, to imagine a happy ending for her - if he (he who really cannot be named, now) is right, then she's living on borrowed time. If he's not, then she's going to grow up with a dead father and a murderess for a mother. I never believed in happy endings. I believed in conclusions. Now I wish for an alternative - continuance of life, everlasting, with no conclusions or endings, just the experience of living. 

"We're nearly there, little Bellatrix" Voldemort croons. He looks dreamy, unfocused. Like a photograph left in the rain.

I do not want to reach our destination. I want to walk forever through this tangled green cave, child in my arms and person who loves me by my side. I want it all. At first, I delighted the promise of Voldemort's death. The dread that it could mean death for Mirach too stuck me like a low, hollow drum and knocked the tears out of me, but each feeling remained clasped to the hand of the other. I have not been able to escape from being myself. I suppose I should take comfort in that. 

"I never wanted to come back. It's a violation of my past. Though I suppose the memory's spoiled already, now that I know you were watching the whole time. I shouldn't really feel anything. It was stupid to think that at least one part of me had not been imprinted by you."

He turns to look at me, pale mask-like face somewhat more bearable to behold in the dinge of the forest. It is first time he's made eye contact since the smashed mirror a fortnight ago.

"It was not stupid. Perhaps naïve. I think that, even now, you do not realise the extent of how our lives intertwine. There is more of me in you than you've discovered, and vice versa. We are united, Bellatrix."

I open my mouth to reply without understanding what I'm going to say. A faint burble of noise stops the words in my throat and I turn sharply towards it. I know that sound. It sings through my dreams.

In silent, solemn recognition, we walk as one through the last of the thick damp trees. The earthy ground gives way to smooth stones, the murky air is replaced with a clear white slap to the skin. When I look into the water I cannot define the reflection - it is as if my life has gone full circle, I've returned to my original self. 

Voldemort stands still for several moments, eyes closed, head thrown back, slitted nostrils flared. He takes several deep breaths then sits carefully on the bank, letting his feet trail in the stream. I think, after all we've been through, this is the most vulnerable I've ever seen him. He seems truly human, the tenderness of those naked pale feet, the simple pleasure of his expression at feeling cold silken water against them. I have been thinking of him in the past tense without realising he's still alive, he's still somebody. In penitent silence, I sit down and place Mirach's blanket-bundled form into a hollow of stones between us. 

"How do you feel?"

He takes a while to consider his answer. This, combined with the distraction of the clean air and the polished sky and his painful breathing, means I have to wait a spell before I get it. 

"I love you."

And that answers everything. Not just what he feels, but everything. What Voldemort did in those unconscious minutes I lay dying to keep me alive. Those three little words are all the trigger I needed to remember.

I remember the ferocity of his embrace and the scald of his tears on my cheek, I remember the sting of the connection formed between his body soul mind and mine, I remember exactly what he told me without words that managed to revive me. There is more magic in this world than charms and jinxes. Magic is all around us, it binds us together, it influences us in all we do. The most powerful emotion can do more than a wand ever could. It was Voldemort's emotion, the depth of the feeling he poured into me, that replaced what I had lost.

I do not find him hard to look at now. Not in this organic world, in this place where all is stripped bare and true. 

"You…" I say, looking to where our feet bob together, outlines distorted by the water. Light is everywhere, like scattered, broken mirrors.

"Yes." he replies, knowing what I know. He shuts his eyes for a moment and swallows. It was either him or me and he chose suicide. 

"And Mirach…what will happen to her after…"

"She will grow. She will live. She will die. Just like the rest of us."

A deep silence pours between us and I begin to think.

"You never meant she was going to die immediately, did you? You knew she was outside of all this, that she had her own life and destiny. So why did you say she was the tragedy?"

"Oh, I'm sure she will be a tragedy in some way. There are a lot of things a person can do to break their parents' hearts. I killed mine."

We laugh together a little. 

"My point is, Mirach is separate from you or I. She's pure. She has the opportunity to create her own purposes. In the end, you choose your own path."

He reaches out and strokes a long, pale finger across Mirach's cheek. Her eyes open, bright sky blue, and her hand curls around her father's finger. The expression on Voldemort's face is indescribable, but it makes me smile.

"I said she was going to die" Voldemort tells me, without looking up "because I wanted to see you cry. I wanted to make you feel something because of me, other than hate or apathy. It is hard, to know how little you understand love. I was giving you a taster of my own."

I see him, all of him, and I see water and light and leaves and freedom, and my hand reaches out because I understand now, because I can touch him without false intentions, this is the real thing, a newly born truth. 

We remain clasped together in silence for a long time. He gradually weakens beneath me until I have to hold on to keep him from collapsing. I feel his body start to crumble inside his robes, like this flesh, once so strong and powerful, is reducing into sand. But that doesn't seem to matter any more. There's a kind of magic in the air. The purest form of magic, that existed long before wands or speech or even the evil that thrives in us. Something sharp and beautifully intense rips through us as one and I want to scream and laugh at the same time. I kiss him instead, which is just as satisfying. Probably because it's the same thing. But - this can't be happening now. Not after all I know about him. And then it occurs to me that all I know of him is all I know about myself, that we are just mirrors finally aligned. So I let all doubts fall away and accept this moment, this neverending kiss, plunge into it like a diver into darkness. My breath is in time with his. My body is in tune with his. I can feel through his clothes, through his skin, right down into the deep red centre of it all. 

i always hoped we would find each other here, Bellatrix. hoped, because you can never totally be sure. not even of yourself, or of what you are able to feel. don't forget that. don't forget your hopes can be for anything. if we meet again, we'll know just how much we hoped for each other.

__

Something flutters. Swells. Breaks apart. A_ll I can feel is air. I open my eyes and the grateful sting of hot, shocking tears begins. I clutch at his black robe, left on the rocks where he sat. I breathe into it, wishing it was still occupied but finding it thoroughly dead, like the shed skin of a snake. The magic still tingles around me. It taps gently at my ear and kisses my fingers one by one. They let go and drop the robe into the water. Shaking, white, dazzled by brightness through my tears, I watch it flow away._

Mirach and I wait for nightfall. We watch the stars appear, like the arrival of old friends. I kiss her and tell her look, there's a new star forming between ours. We can't see it yet but it's there, millions of miles away, just being born from dust and nothing. The greatest tragedy was to lose it, once. But the lost still exist. Sometimes in places you can't reach yet, but existing none the less. It's only a matter of searching until they're found. 

****

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Author's note

thank you to every single person that has reviewed this story. You do not know how much you encouraged me. If it weren't for you, this story would probably never have been completed. So, big *mwahs* to you.

I must say a special thank you to Malu. It is a complement beyond belief that writer such as herself could ever praise one of my stories, let alone encourage me to continue right from chapter one (when this fic was not even a page long and I had no idea what the plot would be). So, I would like to officially dedicate Flames to you, Malu, my fantastical blackcestiest of the blackcesters. 

__


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